Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FIFTY POUNDS A YEAR AND A PENSION by JAMES STEPHENS

First Line: I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE SUN WALK IN THE DAWN
Last Line: FOR THE PIT.
Subject(s): AGING; PENSIONS;
I have never seen the sun walk in the dawn
On a lawn
While the lark sang, mad with rapture, as he came,
Robed in flame,
Racing, where the purple mountains' foreheads loom
Through the gloom.

Or noticed him at evening give the sea
His last fee;
Nor the burnished, ruddy, golden, peaceful sheen
Tread the green;
While the wood, with long and longer shadow, bends
As he wends.

And my lips shall never blow an oaten pipe,
Nor the ripe,
Glowing berries crush between them from the brake,
Where they make
Such a picture that the gods might know delight
At the sight!

For I've sat my life away with pen and rule
On a stool;
Totting little lines of figures; and so will,
Tho' the chill
And the languor of grey hairs upon my brow
Mocks me now.

And sometimes while I work I lift my eyes
To the skies;
To the foot or two of heaven which I trace
In the space
That a grimy window grudges to the spot
Where I tot.

And I ask the God who made me and the sun,
What I've done
To be buried in this dark and dreary cave,
As in a grave,
While the world laughs in scorn now and then
At my pen!

But I'll sit and work my utmost and not budge;
Tho' a grudge
Is ever growing in the bosom of a clod
'Gainst the God
Who condemned him in his lifetime to grow fit
For the pit.



Home: PoetryExplorer.net