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Rupert Brooke
Not with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun,
We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
Down some close-covered by-way of the air,
Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there
Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
Think each in each, immediately wise;
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
What this tumultuous body now denies;
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.
Little shadows, little shadows
Dancing on the chamber wall,
While I sit beside the hearthstone
Where the red flames rise and fall.
Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns,
My three antic shadows wear;
And no sound they make in playing,
For the six small feet are bare.
Dancing gayly, dancing gayly,
To and fro all together,
Like a family of daisies
Blown about in windy weather;
Nimble fairies, nimble fairies,
Playing pranks in the warm glow,
While I sing the nursery ditties
Childish phantoms love and know.
Shadows are now more dense than before
Or my eyes rest on them
Seek them out perhaps
My own shadow is a belt - bag - backpack
When I leave a room I pick it up
a gesture of politeness I never forget
Opposite walls mirrored
In the middle, you
A ghost army rises
One side
inside the other
A fanatic samelook
in their eye
A revolution
Ghosts have no ends
no measurements
The words you said grow faint;
The lamp you lit burns dim;
Yet, still be near your faithless friend
To urge and counsel him.
Still with returning feet
To where life's shadows brood,
With steadfast eyes made clear in death
Haunt his vague solitude.
So he, beguiled with earth,
Yet with its vain things vexed,
Keep even to his own heart unknown
Your memory unperplexed.
Those poor, heartbroken wretches, doomed
To hear at night the clocks' hard tones;
They have no beds to warm their limbs,
But with those limbs must warm cold stones;
Those poor weak men, whose coughs and ailings
Force them to tear at iron railings.
Those helpless men that starve, my pity;
Whose waking day is never done;
Who, save for their own shadows, are
Doomed night and day to walk alone:
They know no bright face but the sun's,
So cold and dark are human ones.
Oak tree,
Elm tree,
And apple bough. . . .
Their shadows fall
On the cool green grass.
Shadows of willow trees lie in the shimmering pool,
And the pine trees' flicker
On crystal snow.
(Even the baby, chubby and sweet,
Poised on her tiny, tottering feet,
Casts now her shadow — an instant's gloom,
Over a purple hyacinth bloom.)
Last winter, set in a fire-lit room,
Were two sprays of long-dried goldenrod. . . .
Feathery, frosty plumes.
They were certainly ghostly enough in themselves,
Now folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers,
And every bloom becomes a bud again,
Shut and sealed up against the golden showers
Of bees that hover in the velvet hours....
Now a strain
Wild and mournful blown from shadow towers,
Echoed from shadow ships upon the foam,
Proclaims the Queen of Night.
From their bowers
The dark Princesses fluttering, wing their flight
To their old Mother, in her huge old home.
The fire burns low
Where it has burned ages ago,
Sinks and sighs
As it has done to a hundred eyes
Staring, staring
At the last cold smokeless glow.
Here men sat
Lonely and watched the golden grate
Turn at length black;
Heard the cooling iron crack:
Shadows, shadows,
Watching the shadows come and go.
And still the hiss
I hear, the soft fire's sob and kiss,
And still it burns
And the bright gold to crimson turns,
Unrealized, the dim hours come and go,
A hooded, listless file of shadows pale;
Men's deeds like visions pass, and scarce avail
To stir dull thought or give it ebb or flow;
The hopes that pushed us Heavenward once, aglow
With passionate desire, now flag and fail;
The lights have vanished, and the wine grown stale,
The blade is rusted and unstrung the bow.
Oh, better far to climb the toilsome height
Than linger in the valley's flowered way,
Far better in a losing cause to fight
Than feel one's sinews wasting day by day;
Give me the hemlock draught and dreamless night,
Before this daily death of apathy !
My song that was a sword is still.
Like a scabbard I have made
A covering with my will
To sheathe its blade.
It had a flashing tongue of steel
That made old shadows start;
It would not let the darkness heal
About my heart.
A ray of jonquils thrills the grey
And frowning winter of a room . . .
Out from the depths of an old day
A burst of spring-light cuts its way,
Lifting the vague perfume
Of walled-in gardens long, long dumb,
Of blooms that never bloomed at all . . .
Then quickly, as autumn's keen winds come.
Shadows, like dead leaves, fall.
Minutes swiftly throb and pass,
Shadows cross the dial-glass,
Speeding ever to some call,
Weary world and shadows, all.
Down the closing aisles of day,
Tramping footsteps die away,
But no tidings thread the gloom,
From the hushed and silent tomb.