Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GONE, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GONE, by                    
First Line: When the morning fair and sweet
Last Line: All are gone!
Subject(s): Children;memory;old Age; Childhood


WHEN the morning fair and sweet
Glimmers through the dusky pane,
For the tread of pattering feet,
Ah! I list in vain.
Not an echo haunts the hall --
Oh, each gladsome, light footfall;
Not an echo wakes the stair --
Silence, silence everywhere;
They are gone!

When I leave my sleepless bed,
Passing from the chambered gloom,
No red cheek and flower-like head
Lift to me their bloom;
Only darkness in the hall
Lingers like a clouded pall;
Round the threshold, o'er the stair --
Darkness, darkness everywhere;
They are gone!

When from out the toilsome mart,
Hopeless, weary, I return,
Oh, these wasting fires at heart --
How they burn -- they burn!
Passionate grief seemed sunk in dearth,
But beside my ruined hearth
All the anguish, all the pain,
Bursts in flaming woe again --
They are gone!

When the twilight hour comes down,
Of all hours the calmest, best,
Hovering like an angel's crown
O'er the day's unrest,
Whence this alien, brooding air?
Whence this whisper of despair?
'T is but Heartbreak's hollow tone
Muttering, "Canst thou live alone?
They are gone!"

Gone! In silences of night
Hapless hands I stretch to find
Vacant spaces left and right,
Vacant as the wind.
While a mother's moan is heard,
Low, as if some wounded bird,
Sore of wing and sore of breast,
Wailed above her shattered nest:
All are gone!





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