Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PRAYER BEFORE SUMMER, by ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PRAYER BEFORE SUMMER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once more across the frozen hills
Last Line: That ends so starkly and so soon?
Alternate Author Name(s): Knish, Anne
Subject(s): Death; Memory; Prayer; Silence; Dead, The


Once more across the frozen hills
Comes the premonitory breath
Of violets and of daffodils
Returning from their masque of death;

And barren branches faintly shake
To the vibrations of the sun;
In the blue sky swift wings awake:
The dance of April is begun.

Again the evening woods will be
Aisles for our trysting feet; again
The summer light on land and sea
Will make the paths of wonder plain.

Belovèd — since the indifferent Powers
That shaped our fibres deign to will
That one more summer-flush be ours,
Ours the bright wave, the flowering hill —

Cannot some wisdom from the past
Make gay and gentle in its mood
This April passage, through the vast
Confusions, toward our quietude? —

And sense of briefness come to lay
Its spell, as might the dreaming moon,
On the poor actors in this play
That ends so starkly and so soon?





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