THE listless year goes dimly down, The sun flares low on meadows brown, And at the low end of the town The ploughman sits with heavy dreams. Crouched on the fallen oak alone With fingers slack he spins a stone, Thinking of youth and mirth once known, With friends as nimble as morning-beams, Who sped with him to this playground, Now threadbare, dumb and sportless found, To laugh and leap the free year round, With bats or rods, in floods or flowers. The sudden air is loud with those! He lifts his face: by heaven, there goes A figure whom he surely knows, His mate. He stares with all his powers: The figure passes without pause. He thinks, that was old Ro, that was -- Call him? recall him? ... He withdraws, Flings down his stone, jeers at his heart: As though that stranger passing now Would wish to know a lad from plough With whom some cobwebbed boyish vow Once ended "never, never part"! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FUNERAL HYMN by LOUIS UNTERMEYER SONNET: 151 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE VERSES DESIGNED TO BE SENT TO MR. ADAMS by ELIZABETH FRANCES AMHERST PENISKEE by THOMAS GOLD APPLETON SONNET: MAN VERSUS ASCETIC. 1 by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON THE MUD-FISH, BY AN INDIGNANT TORY FOOTMAN by CHARLES WILLIAM SHIRLEY BROOKS |