Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN, by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Parched were my lips with drought of noon
Last Line: The glory that might have been.'
Alternate Author Name(s): Ramal, Walter; De La Mare, Walter


Parched were my lips with drought of noon,
Broken my feet, in broken shoon,
The sun shone fierce and leonine
On the salt, salt sea.
But fell at length cool eventide
On barren wave, spread waste and wide,
On spike-grassed, whispering dunes of sand,
And soft-ebbed twilight on that land --
The land of Might-have-been.

Chill sighed the wind on cheek and hair,
A region bare and bleak, yet fair,
Fair with its sparse-strewn, dry-root flowers,
Its siren-singing haunted bowers,
The silence of those long, long hours
That stuff no mortal year.
Of silver and untroubled sheen
Hung in the West's crystalline green
A planet ne'er by mortal seen,
Named 'Never', sweet and clear.

A thin brook gushed o'er stones hard-by,
'Forsaken' it babbled; lone was I;
Night's oriental canopy
Tented the eastern sky.
Shade that I was in dream waylaid,
Benighted, and yet unafraid,
I sate me there, all sorrows fled,
And whispered to the sea
The thousand songs I had hoped to sing
When I on earth was wandering,
Whereof, alas! poor words could bring
Nought but a deadened echoing
Of 'Benedicite!'

Sweeter than any note men hear
When, latticed in by moonbeams clear,
The bird of the darkness to its fere
Tells out love's mystery,
Rose in my throat and poured its dew --
That hymn of praise -- my being through;
Gave peace to a heart that never knew
Peace until then, I ween.

No listener mine, mayhap; but ne'er
Trolled happier wight in heaven fair
To a lyre of golden string.
Nought but a soundless voice was I
Beneath that deep, unvoyaged sky,
Silence and silence telling o'er
What makes the stars to sing.

O vanity of age to mourn
What youth in folly left forlorn!
Doth not earth's strange and lovely mean
Only, 'Come, see, O son of man,
All that you hoped, the nought you can --
The glory that might have been.'





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