HIS friend the watchman was still awake, The Town-hall roof one silver flake, And the moon hung over it. He scarcely knew what grief he bore, At every step his heart-beat sore, And his knapsack weighed him down. The street it was so long, so long, And he heard a voice singing a song: When the breeze of the May is blowing! Now elder boughs o'er the hedgerow nod, And he sees the marble Mother of God Standing white at the Minster door. Here he stood for a moment still, And heard what the jackdaw whistled shrill Up above on the steeple cross. Then the landlord of the Lion Hotel Put out his lights, and slowly the bell Of the Minster clock pealed ten. Everything was, as it used to be, The nightingale sang on the linden-tree, And the fountain dreamily ran. Out of his coat the rose he dashed, The flower with his stick on the flags he thrashed, Till the sparks flew, then he went. The lamp o'er the gateway flickered red, And the wood into which his pathway led Stood black in the moonlight there ... And where the path the Saints' Stone reaches, Just where it bends around the beeches, It all came back to him. The leaves rustled, he stood and stood: He stared down where, beneath the wood, The roofs were glistening. He saw the house in the garden gleaming, And this was the end, was the end of the dreaming, And-the roofs were glistening! His heart beat wild with piteous pain! When I come, when I come, when I come back again! But he never came back any more. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE WATER by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE PRODIGAL SON by DAVID IGNATOW THE BUTCHER SHOP by DAVID IGNATOW THE PASSING OF THE EX-SLAVE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TIRED by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO ATLANTA UNIVERSITY - ITS FOUNDERS AND TEACHERS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |