Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PRAYER BEFORE SUMMER, by ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE Poet's Biography First Line: Once more across the frozen hills Last Line: That ends so starkly and so soon? Alternate Author Name(s): Knish, Anne Subject(s): Death; Memory; Prayer; Silence; Dead, The | ||||||||
Once more across the frozen hills Comes the premonitory breath Of violets and of daffodils Returning from their masque of death; And barren branches faintly shake To the vibrations of the sun; In the blue sky swift wings awake: The dance of April is begun. Again the evening woods will be Aisles for our trysting feet; again The summer light on land and sea Will make the paths of wonder plain. Belovèd since the indifferent Powers That shaped our fibres deign to will That one more summer-flush be ours, Ours the bright wave, the flowering hill Cannot some wisdom from the past Make gay and gentle in its mood This April passage, through the vast Confusions, toward our quietude? And sense of briefness come to lay Its spell, as might the dreaming moon, On the poor actors in this play That ends so starkly and so soon? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND LOREINE: A HORSE by ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE |
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