Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


TEARS by CHARD POWERS SMITH

First Line: WHEN I HAVE SEEN YOU WEEP, I HEAR THE DRUM
Last Line: AND WE TAKE HANDS AND LEAP INTO THE DARK.
Subject(s): GRIEF; TEARS; SORROW; SADNESS;

When I have seen you weep, I hear the drum
Of marching years, and other tears to be;
And there is less of love than irony
In my soft words, and tenderness is dumb.
For I am too long twinned with tragedy
To look for beauty on this side of pain;
And tears I dry, I wait to see again --
This is my falsehood, this my cruelty.
But through the tears, I see an avenue
Like wet Leviathan, his rainy mail
Lamp-spiked straight up the hills; and there we two
Singing from glistening scale to glistening scale
To where he dips, mist swallows the last spark,
And we take hands and leap into the dark.



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