Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GRAVEL PIT, by ANNE SOUTHERNE TARDY



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GRAVEL PIT, by                    
First Line: This conclave of innumerable stones
Last Line: In battlements that tower toward the sun.
Subject(s): Sonnet (as Literary Form); Stones; Granite; Rocks


I

This conclave of innumerable stones,
The blood and sinew of earth's hidden might,
Has rested in quiescence; sensed no light
No clamorous or responsive antiphones
Have pierced the mould. Strong dynasties and thrones
Have crumbled, while the solid troglodite
Has slept, deep sepulchred through endless night
When Chaos was, and life but undertones.

As callous shovels urged by alien hands
Now stir, and pry them forth relentlessly,
From immemorial and dungeoned keep,
Dust, like the mist above the ocean sands,
Rises above this dry forgotten sea,
Ghost of the fog which hid an ancient deep.

II

These satin-finished globules were entombed
When first the land was parted from the sea;
Ground by the heel of time immutably,
And at the fateful hour of birth inhumed
By darkness, irrevocably fore-doomed
To aeons of Cimmerian apathy.
Now by the same unalterable decree,
Darkness pierced, an ultimate day has loomed.

The indurated pebbly whiteness lays
New paths for eager mortals to pursue,
Paving a stony way to bulwarks won,
The cloud-high miracles that man assay.
From subterranean depths they rise anew
In battlements that tower toward the sun.





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