Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE LAST LABOUR, by CHARLES R. MURPHY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LAST LABOUR, by                    
First Line: From your short time of gladnes in fair weather
Last Line: The triumph and the meekness of the grave.
Subject(s): Winter


From your short time of gladnes in fair weather
When day and night before your eyes are drawn
And sun and star, arising, share together
The triumph and the meekness of their dawn,
And sweet earth breathes with sounds of life achieving,
And bird and bee and herd are on the hill,
And broad noon is gracious past believing
With peace of sun and grass, and fear is still --
You shall come then to a lost December,
Into the whip and stillness of the snow,
When the failing year's last glowing ember
Fades to white ash of winter, and you know
How cold, how hard, the heartless breast of winter
Is to your numbed and lonely selves that go
Each fruitless to your house where but the splinter
Of a frozen star is, ice, before your low
Unhaunted window, where each of you shall see
Earth shut against you, sky forbidden, traceless,
Where flowers of flame of absent days may be
Hung visions for such as you forever placeless --
There in the stillness, cold, futility
Of faith, awaits you now the final labour,
The venture of the farthest thrust from dearth
Of soul, with your almost despairing sabre,
Into space that is but hope unleashed from earth --
The steeling of your gladness in fair weather
To bravery as sun and flower are brave,
So that with sod and star you share together
The triumph and the meekness of the grave.





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