Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PEBBLES, by JOHN FREEMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PEBBLES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: One whined, o why into this wide and / lonely
Last Line: Of voices in a wood of april buds.
Subject(s): Grief; Life; Pain; Sorrow; Sadness; Suffering; Misery


ONE whined, O why into this wide and lonely
World am I cast, hearing no voice but my own?
One sighed, Why should my misery be added
To miseries of a world so frozen-hearted?
Another groaned, Damnation take these whiners,
That will not let a man enjoy his griefs.
And one, Be dumb, sad egotists, and let me wake
Rebellion and rebellion and rebellion.
And one snarled indistinct, a chatter of syllables
Meaning nothing but hunger, anger or pain.
Another shrilled, Lord, 'tis a heavenly morning:
Voices I hear a-chiding, but they mingle
Their small pathetic notes until I laugh;
While another piped, making an antiphonal
Mirth of simple voices and brimming echoes.

So sounded the tawny pebbles as we skimmed them
Across the frozen ponds from either side,
And sped the waking babblers each to other.
Tough roots of firs and birches held the ice-ponds
Sunken in a brown bowl, that made one voice
A score, and all the voices like the tangle
Of voices in a wood of April buds.





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