Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DUNES, by VICTOR MARIE HUGO


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE DUNES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now that my tasks are done, and fast
Last Line: Blue-flowered on the sandy spurs.
Subject(s): Death; Dunes; Dead, The


NOW that my tasks are done, and fast
Life dwindles like a torch's glow,
Now that I seek the grave, down-cast
By weight of years and weight of woe;

Now that belovéd things gone by
Fade from my sight as though drawn in
By some dark whirlpool of the sky
On summits once I yearned to win.

Now that I say, "We yet shall soar,
The lie that shall stand revealed with dawn!"—
I am sad, and wander on the shore
Like one into his dream withdrawn.

Beyond the sandhills without pause
I watch unending breakers play,
Cloud-flocks that fly the vulture claws
Of wind that seeks a fleecy prey;

The roaring tide, the humming air
I hear, and sound of swathe and scythe,
And in my musing mind compare
The weary voices and the blithe;

And often prone along some dune
I lie where scant the grass is sown,
Until I see the dazéd moon
With her foreboding eyes look down.

Athwart the gulf of darkened space
She mounts and sheds a light of dreams,
And each stares in the other's face—
The man that weeps, the moon that beams.

Where now are fled the days that waned?
Are all who erst have known me dead?
And are my dazzled eyeballs drained
Of all the light that youth once shed?

Is all gone by? Forlorn and frail,
My voice unanswered dies away.
O winds! O waves! And must I fail
Like gusty wind or driven spray?

Shall all I loved be lost to sight?
Within my soul there falls the gloom.
O Earth whose peaks are veiled in night,
Am I the ghost, and thou the tomb?

Are life, love, joy and hope all spent?
I wait, I ask, I still implore.
And all my urns are earthward bent
To find one drop still left to pour.

How nigh remorse is memory!
How everything with tears is rife!
O Death, how cruel cold thy key
Within the wards of human life!

Yet louder than the wind that drives
The endless billows, my thought stirs:
Summer is come, the thistle thrives
Blue-flowered on the sandy spurs.





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