VENGEFUL across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak, Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak -- Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors. And then there were the leaves that plagued him so! The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then They stopped, and stayed there -- just to let him know How dead they were; but if the old man cried, They fluttered off like withered souls of men. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN ANCIENT PROVERB by WILLIAM BLAKE MACFLECKNOE; OR, A SATIRE UPON THE TRUE-BLUE-PROTESTANT POET by JOHN DRYDEN THE LARK ASCENDING by GEORGE MEREDITH THE SHADOW DANCE by LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON SONNET WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF 1914: 1 by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY SONG OF AN ATOM by JOSEPHINE BARNETT |