WITHIN the oak a throb of pigeon wings Fell silent, and grey twilight hushed the fold, And spiders' hammocks swung on half-oped things That shook like foreigners upon our cold. A gipsy lit a fire and made a sound Of moving tins, and from an oblong moon The river seemed to gush across the ground To the cracked metre of a marching tune. And then three syllables of melody Dropped from a blackbird's flute, and died apart Far in the dewy dark. No more but three, Yet sweeter music never touched a heart Neath the blue domes of London. Flute and reed, Suggesting feelings of the solitude When will was all the Delphi I would heed, Lost like a wind within a summer wood From little knowledge where great sorrows brood. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915 by CARL SANDBURG THE STRAPLESS by KAREN SWENSON JOAN OF ARC IN RHEIMS by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS IN HOSPITAL: 23. MUSIC by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY TERNISSA, FR HELLENICS by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM by EDGAR ALLAN POE LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY |