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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AWAKENING, by EDWARD DOWDEN Poet's Biography
First Line: With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod
Last Line: The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.
First Line: With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod
Last Line: The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.
WITH brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around, --
And all forms mean, -- to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road.
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, and odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze!
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And vernal prophesyings in the land,
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.