Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HER HEART BREADS SILENCE, by GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HER HEART BREADS SILENCE, by                    
First Line: Because that thou art pale and cold and still
Last Line: His holiest honour in this faithful breast!
Subject(s): Knowledge; Love; Pain; Secrets; Winter; Suffering; Misery


BECAUSE that thou art pale and cold and still,
I feel thy spirit, Winter, one with mine;
All times are sunlit saving only thine,
And all but thee the joys of life fulfill:
Sweet madcap Spring skips free from hill to hill,
And Summer's golden sap swells every vine,
The wine-dark eyes of Autumn brood benign
Through purpling ways upon the whippoorwill.

His note is silenced, gray and lonely ghost,
By thee alone; from thee the birds and streams
Shudder away for shelter, love thee not;
And the great Glory thou dost worship most
Withdraws his being, and averts his beams,
And leaves thee to thy melancholy lot.

He does not know the secret in thy heart,
And why thy face is pale he does not dream,
Nor yet how excellent thy sight would seem
If he approaching saw thee what thou art:
In his smile smiling, of his presence part,
By his warm radiance made to glow and gleam;—
Thy fruitful beauty straight becomes his theme,
And love his challenge is, and love his chart,

So, Winter, is it with the soul of me
My hero scorns so slight and frail to find—
And ever slighter while it waits unblest;—
O turn he but a moment, he should see
His own light in these eyes, to all else blind,
His holiest honour in this faithful breast!





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