Argemone
The terrible night-watch is over,
I turn where I lie,
To eastward my dim eyes discover
Faint streaks in the sky ;
Faint streaks on a faint light that dapples
And dawns like the ripening of apples,
Closes with darkness and grapples,
And darkness must die.
And the dawn finds us where the dusk found us—
The quick and the dead ;
Thou dawn-slaying darkness around us,
Oh ! slay me instead !
Thou pitiless earth that would sever
Twain souls, reuniting them never,
Oh, gape and engulf me for ever,
Oh, cover my head !
The toils that men strive with stout-hearted,
The fears that men fly,
I have known them, but they have departed,
And thou hast gone by.
Men toiling, and straining, and striving,
Are glad, peradventure, for living ;
I render for life no thanksgiving,
Glad only to die.
Too alike to me now are all changes,
Naught gladdens, naught grieves.
Alike, now, pale snow on the ranges,
Pale gold on the sheaves.
Alike now the hum of glad bees on
Green boughs, and the sigh of sad trees on
Sere uplands, the fall of the season,
The fall of the leaves.
Alike now each wind blows the breezes
That kiss where they roam,
The breath of the March wind that freezes
In the rime of the loam ;
The storm-blast that lashes and scourges,
And rends the white crests of the surges,
As it sweeps with the thunder of dirges
Across the sea foam.
Alike now all rainfall and down-fall,
Foul seasons and fair ;
Let the rose on my patch or the thorn fall,
I heed not, nor care ;
Nor for grey light of dawn, nor for dun light
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poem by Adam Lindsay Gordon
Added by Poetry Lover
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