To All WE SAY you sleep, but light your sleep, meseems; We call ye silent, when your undertone Threads all the world's exultance, wrath and moan, Ye lifeful-dead, with whom this sad earth teems! Are these your voices mixed with troubled streams? Is this your speech, in ancient tongues unknown, Through twilight fields and darkling wood-ways blown? Have ye the winds of heaven to serve your schemes? O aye-increasing, far outnumbering host, Crowd not so close our handful-breathing clan: This moment ye are distant but a span, Such as Ulysses kept on that stern coast Where round the warm libation, lips all wan, With clamor shrill, came many a thirsting ghost! To One Thou movest in their front, serene, serene! How smilest thou, as one not knowing yet That he is Death's, -- the rose and violet (Not asphodel) about thy temples seen. Now with drawn spirit-sword I stand between Thee and the murmuring shades that so beset; Be thy lips only with the offering wet; Then speak! -- where goest thou? where hast thou been? In vain, in vain! for, wavering through the gloom, Thou art become stream, forest, hill ... and now It is the evening star that masks thy brow. Gone art thou, gone the rose and violet bloom, And the unnumbered shades their sway resume: Shall all the dead speak to me -- and not thou! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DEATH AND CUPID; AN ALLEGORY by JOHN GODFREY SAXE FAST ANCHOR'D ETERNAL O LOVE! by WALT WHITMAN THE VEERY'S FLUTE by LUCY BRANCH ALLEN CHANT OF DEPARTURE; A MISSIONARY'S PRAYER by ALFRED BARRETT STANZA by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON PSALM 39, VERSE 5 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE ILLUSIONS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE by ZOE KINCAID BROCKMAN POETICAL INSCRIPTION FOR AN ALTAR OF INDEPENDENCE by ROBERT BURNS |