Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A VERY WISE MAN, by SIEGFRIED SASSOON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A VERY WISE MAN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
Last Line: You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you'd say.


I
FIRES in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts,
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords
And wizardry of ghosts.

II
In a strange house I woke; heard overhead
Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream...
(Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted,
Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream
Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day.
(You know how bees come into a twilight room
From dazzling afternoon, then sail away
Out of the curtained gloom.)

III
You understand my thoughts; though, when you think,
You're out beyond the boundaries of my brain.
I'm but a bird at dawn that cries 'chink, chink' --
A garden-bird that warbles in the rain.
And you're the flying-man, the speck that steers
A careful course far down the verge of day,
Half-way across the world. Above the years
You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you'd say.






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