ON the crimson breast of the sunset The Gray Selections lie, And their lonely, grief-stained faces Are turned to a pitiless sky; They are wrinkled and seamed with drought-fire And wound at the throat with weeds, They sob in the aching loneness But never a passer heeds. I pity you, Gray Selections, As I pass you by in the light, And I turn again with the shadows To take your hand in the night; In homesteads and yards deserted 'Tis little the world can see, But the wail of your endless sorrow Throbs under the moon to me. I come to you, Gray Selections, When the crickets gather and croon, An hour at the back of the sunset, An hour in advance of the moon; How eager they are to whisper Their tale as they hear me pass! Twenty at once in the oak-trees Ten at a time in the grass. The night-winds are chanting above you A dirge in the cedar-trees Whose green boughs groan at your shoulder, Whose dead leaves drift to your knees; You cry, and the curlews answer; You call, and the wild dogs hear; Through gaps in the old log-fences They creep when the night is near. I stand by your fenceless gardens And weep for the splintered staves; I watch by your empty ingles And mourn by your white-railed graves; I see from your crumbling doorways The whispering white forms pass, And shiver to hear dead horses Crop-cropping the long gray grass. Where paddocks are dumb and fallow And wild weeds waste to the stars I can hear the voice of the driver, The thresh of the swingle-bars; I can hear the hum of the stripper That follows the golden lanes, The snort of the tiring horses, The clink of the bucking chains. It is night; but I see the smoke-wreaths Float over the dancing haze; I can hear the jackass laughing When south winds rustle the maize; I can catch the axes' ringing, And out on the range's crown I can hear the red fires roaring And the great trees thundering down. I pity you, Gray Selections, Your hearths as cold as a stone, The days you must pass unaided, The nights you must brave alone; But most when the wailing curlews Call over the drear lagoon, And out of the ring-barked timber Comes blazing the red, red moon. They fought for you, Gray Selections, The battle of long dry years, Through seed-times of sweat and sorrow To harvests of hunger and tears; You turned from the lips that wooed you, And Justice, awake on her throne, For sake of those brave hearts broken, Is watching you break your own! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE MOURNING-GARMENT: THE SHEPHERD'S WIFE'S SONG by ROBERT GREENE COMMEMORATION ODE READ AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: LUCINDA MATLOCK by EDGAR LEE MASTERS BALLADE OF A TRAVELLER'S JINX by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS |