WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue? Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped And garnered that the golden daylight yields. Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk, As farther off the scythe of night is swung, And little stars come rolling from their husk. And all the earth is gone into a dust Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, Covered with aged lichens, past with must, And all the sky has withered and gone cold. And so I sit and scan the book of grey, Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading, All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding Nay, take this weary Book of Hours away. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DIBDIN'S GHOST by EUGENE FIELD THE FINDING OF LOVE by ROBERT RANKE GRAVES IN HOSPITAL: 10. STAFF NURSE: NEW STYLE by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY THE ILIAD: ACHILLES OVER THE TRENCH by HOMER HERE LIES A LADY by JOHN CROWE RANSOM MARCHING (AS SEEN FROM THE LEFT FILE) by ISAAC ROSENBERG THE END OF IT by FRANCIS THOMPSON THE TRANSLATED WAY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED by MATTHEW ARNOLD |