Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ROOMS, by MARGARET SACKVILLE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ROOMS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I know the heaviness of official rooms
Last Line: (outside an organ's singing in the road!)
Subject(s): Clergy; Death; Houses, Deserted; Memory; Rooms; Priests; Rabbis; Ministers; Bishops; Dead, The


I KNOW the heaviness of official rooms,
The solemn lights, the unmysterious glooms,
The narrow windows looking on a street,
It, too, important, muted and discreet;
The weighty curtains with their brazen rings
Drawn by a little rope which works on springs;
The furniture of polished mahogany
Which changes not though generations die;
The carpet whose thick pile muffles the tread
As though some Minister were newly dead.
O! serious shrine of careful Middle Age,
Where massive tomes and the white foolscap's page
Speak the same language still, year after year,
Without emotion, memory or fear.
Where on hot Summer days the windows yawn
Open, polite and bored, long after dawn,
Or the blind shakes at the wind's sudden pull,
With a slow movement dignified and dull.
O! place for ever soaked in endless noon
Where nothing too late happens or too soon!
(Outside an organ's singing—) nor delay
Nor haste mars the smooth texture of each day,
But all is silent, confident, secure
Safe in a world where little else is sure,
And Life surrenders, harnessed to a Code.—
(Outside an organ's singing in the road!)





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