Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AT LAST, by ANONYMOUS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AT LAST, by                    
First Line: O'er the sunlit hills of berkshire drooped the drowsy summer calm
Last Line: Where at last the soldier's sweetheart slumbers by her lover's side
Subject(s): Soldiers;summer;virginia (state)


O'ER the sunlit hills of Berkshire drooped the drowsy summer calm,
Filling all the glens and valleys with the silence like a psalm;
Like an angel-chanted anthem thrilling toward a poet's ear,
Till he dreams the mystic rhythm God alone can live and hear.

By a little spring that bubbled from beneath a towering pine,
Hidden half and overshaded by the sprays of blackberry vine,
Stood a man and maiden, waiting till the parting hour should come,
When their clasping hands must sever at the rattle of the drum,

He to offer life for duty on the swart Virginian plain,
She to watch and hope his coming through the sunshine and the rain.
Very few the words they uttered as they waited hand in hand,
But the silence throbbed with voices that their hearts could understand.

Tender voices of the past time, and the days forever done, --
Days divinely sweet and holy, when their love had just begun;
Hopeful voices of the future whispering of the joys to be,
When the clanging calls of battle hushed to hymns of victory.

Sank the day into the sunset, and there came the tread of feet,
Marching to the sound of music, up the length of level street;
Then he drew her to his bosom, parting backward from her face
The long golden hair, whose halo made a glory in the place;

Almost calm above his passion, as he whispered, "I must go,
You will send me letters often? kiss them where you sign them -- so!
And if I no more come homeward," trembling grew his lips and white,
"All these happy days together, you will not forget them quite?"

Answer none of word or gesture for a moment did she deign,
Save the mute, pathetic promise of her eyes' remonstrant pain.
Then, because her love sat higher than his doubts could lift their fronts,
She drew down his lips and kissed them, as a woman kisses once.

"Would to God," she said, "my lover, that my life for thine might be!
But where'er his voice shall call thee, in his time I'll follow thee."
That was all. The soldiers' tramping passed and slowly died away,
And she knelt beside the pine-tree all alone to weep and pray.

Came the solemn twilight gemming sky and stream with starry spheres,
Came the tender twilight dropping over all its dewy tears;
And she sought once more her duties and the dull routine of life,
Tenfold harder in the bearing than the battle's frenzied strife.

Days of forced and weary marches and of combat fierce and red,
Nights of bivouac round the camp-fire with the star alone o'erhead,
Months of hopeless, hungry torture in the Southern prison-pen,
And a dumb, dead face that never love should wake to life again.

On the frozen hills of Berkshire white the snows of winter lie,
Scarlet red against the sunset where their summits pierce the sky.
In a little country churchyard climbing up the side of one,
Where the first arbutus blossoms, and the grass greens first i' the sun,

Side by side two graves are sleeping. Over one the flowers have grown
Ten long years, and bloomed and withered, and the autumn leaves have blown.
On the headstone of the other the first wreaths have hardly dried,
Where at last the soldier's sweetheart slumbers by her lover's side.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net