Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN AEOLIAN HARP, by KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN AEOLIAN HARP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dost thou not hear? Amid dun, lonely
Last Line: With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb.
Alternate Author Name(s): Field, Michael (with Edith Emma Cooper)
Subject(s): Harps; Musical Instruments; Lyres


DOST thou not hear? Amid dun, lonely hills
Far off a melancholy music shrills,
As for a joy that no fruition fills.

Who live in that far country of the wind?
The unclaimed hopes, the powers but half-divined,
The shy, heroic passions of mankind.

And all are young in those reverberant bands;
None marshals them, no mellow voice commands;
They whirl and eddy as the shifting sands.

There, there is ruin, and no ivy clings;
There pass the mourners for untimely things,
There breaks the stricken cry of crownless kings.

But ever and anon there spreads a boom
Of wonder through the air, arraigning doom
With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb.





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