Читать книгу Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth - George Meredith - Страница 5

​

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN.

Table of Contents

I.

Last night returning from my twilight walk

I met the gray mist Death, whose eyeless brow

Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk

He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:

O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II.

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.

Another stood by me, a shape in stone,

Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,

And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:

O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

​

III.

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.

Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,

And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,

Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline:

Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.