Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ROOMS, by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ROOMS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is nothing on earth more lonely than a room
Last Line: And knows that room is life, will pass unmoved through death.
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Death; Graves; Solitude; Graveyards; Dead, The; Tombs; Tombstones; Loneliness


There is nothing on earth more lonely than a room;
Outdoors are stately silent places,
Filled with unchanging friendly faces,
Sharing our triumph or our doom.
But here where four flat walls share everything
With the sunlight filtering through the window-panes,
Life seems a row of black and polished grains
Listlessly slipping down an endless string.

Death paces up and down in each room we have;
Each room is a tabernacle filled with little deaths.
Pale drifting moments! Their enfeebled breaths
Only stirred once, then settled in the grave.
And over them all there broods one changeless thought,
That we too in our time must so pass out;
As passes the light across the walls, without
Full knowledge of the goal it daily sought.

Impulse within a room swings to-and-fro,
Shaping in letters hard and firm and clear,
What all the world that scorns and slips us here
Will never stop to read and never know: —
"Seek God not in the forest but the cell;"
This is the lesson that our rooms can say.
And though your tomb be open every day,
There may be resurrection-dawns to tell.

Who learns to think in rooms will conquer thought;
Who looks at walls will learn of patience' self;
Who keeps a few books, oft-read, on a shelf
Will enter in a kingdom safe, unbought.
Who warms his hands at a grate's glowing breath
Will find the warmth that runs through other hands.
Who enters in a room and understands
And knows that room is life, will pass unmoved through death.





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