HERE did his fathers live and pass To slumber after ceaseless toil, Sealing beneath the springing grass Their silent epic of the soil. For here they tilled and hardly won From out the slow and stubborn weald In murk and mist and kindlier sun These acres and their scanty yield. And here he stands, as oft they stood, Untutored in the Saxon speech, Driving his furrows from the wood Down to the long, low river-reach. His words are few and few his needs, He seeks no quarrel with his kind, And silence deeper silence breeds Within the mazes of his mind. Yet men have seen at one loved name His quiet face suffuse with fire, A word that wakes within his frame The pulse of some Silurian sire, Who, in this place and by this home, Heard from afar the tramping feet, And knew the awful arm of Rome Had groped to find his green retreat, Then swiftly to the onset came, Like some avenger of the years, Swept on the cohorts like a flame, And burned and died amid the spears. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JANGLING MEMORY by KATHERINE MANSFIELD JOURNEY TO A KNOWN PLACE by HAYDEN CARRUTH WISDOM COMETH WITH THE YEARS by COUNTEE CULLEN ARMAGEDDON by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A SEA-SHORE GRAVE by SIDNEY LANIER MONADNOCK IN EARLY SPRING by AMY LOWELL |