Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BALLAD OF THE OUTER LIFE, by HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BALLAD OF THE OUTER LIFE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: And deep-eyed children cannot long be children
Last Line: Like heavy honey out of hollow combs.
Subject(s): Death; Life; Mortality; Dead, The


AND deep-eyed children cannot long be children,
Knowing of nothing they grow up and die,
And all men go their ways upon the earth.

And bitter fruits are sweetened by and by,
And fall at night like dead birds to the floor,
And in a few days rot even where they lie.

And ever blows the wind, and evermore
A multitude of words we speak and hear,
And now are happy, and now tired and sore.

And roads run through the grass, and towns uprear
Their torch-filled toils, some menacingly live,
And some cadaverously dry and drear.

Why are these built aloft? And ever strive,
So countless many, not to be the same?
And tears drive laughter out till death arrive?

What profits man this ever-changing game?
Full-grown are we, yet still like chartless ships,
And wandering never follow any aim.

What profit hath he who the furthest roams?
And yet he sayeth much who "evening" saith,
A word from which deep melancholy drips

Like heavy honey out of hollow combs.





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