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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE GREAT AND SILENT THINGS, by CHARLES HANSON TOWNE Poet's Biography
First Line: How silently the years, in long procession
Last Line: Softly to god, silent to our creator!
Subject(s): Aging
First Line: How silently the years, in long procession
Last Line: Softly to god, silent to our creator!
Subject(s): Aging
HOW silently the years, in long procession,
Come gliding down the corridors of Time to us!
O quietly they come and take possession
Of our dear youth, and weigh us with oppression;
How great they seem, and how sublime to us!
How softly Love into the heart comes creeping!
How wonderfully low is her command to us!
She wakes the soul that erstwhile lay a-sleeping,
She dries the eyes that were but lately weeping,
Revealing all her Promised Land to us.
And Death! O with a velvet tread she finds us,
And teaches us her awful lore and mystery;
Like sheaves of wheat are we what time she binds us,
And in a little sheet of whiteness winds us --
And this is all of our poor history!
O we who loudly cry our names in chorus
Across the mighty years, shall sooner, later,
Go humbly back upon the tide that bore us
To this brief life, as men have gone before us,
Softly to God, silent to our Creator!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
AFTER THE GENTLE POET KOBAYASHI ISSA by ROBERT HASS
MEMORY AS A HEARING AID by TONY HOAGLAND
AMOROSA AND COMPANY by CONRAD AIKEN
GRAY WEATHER by ROBINSON JEFFERS
FROM THE SPANISH by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
CITY ROOFS by CHARLES HANSON TOWNE