Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LONELY BURIAL, by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LONELY BURIAL, by             Poet's Biography
First Line: There were not many at that lonely place
Last Line: The terrible bareness of the soul's last house.
Subject(s): Funerals; Burials


There were not many at that lonely place,
Where two scourged hills met in a little plain.
The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again.
Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race
Unseen by any. Toward the further woods
A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased.
-- We were most silent in those solitudes --
Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest,

The clotted earth piled roughly up about
The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing,
Short words in swordlike Latin -- and a rout
Of dreams most impotent, unwearying.
Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse,
The terrible bareness of the soul's last house.








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