Here at the wayside station, as many a morning, I watch the smoke torn from the fumy engine Crawling across the field in serpent sorrow. Flat in the east, held down by stolid clouds, The struggling day is born and shines already On its warm hearth far off. Yet something here Glimmers along the ground to show the seagulls White on the furrows' black unturning waves. But now the light has broadened. I watch the farmstead on the little hill, That seems to mutter: 'Here is day again' Unwillingly. Now the sad cattle wake In every byre and stall, The ploughboy stirs in the loft, the farmer groans And feels the day like a familiar ache Deep in his body, though the house is dark. The lovers part Now in the bedroom where the pillows gleam Great and mysterious as deep hills of snow, An inaccessible land. The wood stands waiting While the bright snare slips coil by coil around it, Dark silver on every branch. The lonely stream That rode through darkness leaps the gap of light, Its voice grown loud, and starts its winding journey Through the day and time and war and history. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOMORROW by FELIX LOPE DE VEGA CARPIO PROMISES LIKE A PIE-CRUST by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI FROM A YOUNG WOMAN TO AN OLD OFFICER WHO COURTED HER by ELIZABETH FRANCES AMHERST PRAYER by ANTON ALEXANDER VON AUERSPERG EPITAPH ON SUSANNAH BARBAULD MARISSAL by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE PURSUIT by HENRY BELLAMANN |