Dead, long dead,
Long dead!
And my heart is a handful of dust,
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain;
For in a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street,
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
The hoofs of the horses beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain
With never an end to the stream of passing feet,
Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,
Clamour and rumble and ringing and clatter....
O me! why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
May be still I am but half-dead.
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come,
To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper.
And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath
With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry....
Yet God's just doom shall be wreak'd on a giant liar,
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the long, long canker of peace is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
They sat along the forms, like morning doves
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch.
A rosy blonde and in a college gown
That clad her like an april daffodilly
(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
As bottom agates seem to wave and float,
In crystal currents of clear morning seas.
And leaning there on those balusters, high
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale
That blown about the foliage underneath,
And sated with the innumerable rose,
Beat balm upon our eyelids.