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A DAY REMORSEFUL, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: A day remorseful, heavy, dun
Last Line: Its shadow and its sound.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Remorse


A DAY remorseful, heavy, dun,
Had overcast the skies,
As though the winter-vanquished sun
Would never more arise.
Brown trees drew out of blurred wet air
A mockery of pearls,
And tiny brooks seemed everywhere
To speak in slakes and swirls.
There was no hope within their home,
There was not even bread:
Within was gloom, without was gloom,
And surely God seemed dead.
Among the clenching mists they went,
Along the lonely road,
With nothing but their thoughts that meant
More than a traveller's load --
By black ponds dull with dying sags,
By heavy-hearted moors,
By sheep-lanes trod to clogging quags,
By uncouth farmyard stores.
Ah, Christmas day all penniless,
When these were brought so low!
Yet now they feel from that dead stress
A sullen pleasure grow;
Most like the yew all stern and dark
That grows in churchyard ground:
The sexton has some pride to mark
Its shadow and its sound.





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