Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTER THE GREAT WIND, by ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTER THE GREAT WIND, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Let us not further trespass down this lane
Last Line: And over us the constellations wane.
Subject(s): Calm; Peace; Placid; Undisturbed; Tranquility


LET us not further trespass down this lane
Since now the trees will feel a leathern tread
Over their hidden feet, and silenced
Will know we are not centaurs come again.

A moment past, and they perhaps had seen
In our slow-moving shadows, only those,
So rapt were they in sound, they might have been
With shouting autumn seas where no man knows.

But now the weald is very still; above,
That quadrature of limbs like twisted bars,
Has scarcely moved, since last the great wind drove
Its Viking song beneath the candent stars.

So thunderous a force, it seemed the downs
Would crumble in its passing, and be gone
When we who loved them, in our orisons,
Looked southward for their silhouette at dawn.

Familiar winds there are, as shepherds know,
That wheel above the southdown flocks at noon,
And those that in the twilight come and go,
In deep-cleft lanes a-gossip with the moon.

But this was alien, and its frenzy stirred
Our stoic trees to clamorous unrest,
Pelting this sky with some barbaric word
That seemed half battle-slogan and half jest.

But even now it passes Finisterre;
Now are its voices strident over Spain.
Let us return: the land is quiet here,
And over us the constellations wane.





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