THE sighing time, the sighing time! ... The old house mourns and shudders so; And the bleak garrets' crevices Like whirring distaffs utter dread; Streams of shadow people go By hollow stairs and passages In black cloths herding out their dead. Along the creaking corridors They troop with sighs, grayhead and young, They droop their heads in bitter tears. The panels yawn like charnel doors Where the dark windows ivy-clung Are gloating spiders' belvederes. Without, like old Laocoon, The yewtree claws the serpent gusts, The wicket swings with peacock screams. Time in the courtyard leans upon His pausing scythe, in dim mistrusts And sad recalls of summer dreams. The garden, cynically sown With leaves in death unlovely, bows Its tragic plume of pipy stalks: Poison-spores have overgrown In crazy-coloured death-carouse The parterres and the lovers' walks. The anguished sun is swiftly set, And Hesper's primrose coronal Is sullied with distortions pale. The grange bell in its minaret With dreary three-times-dreary call Dingles in the gale. The sighing time, the sighing time. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD by ROBERT BROWNING ON MY JOYFUL DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY OF COLOGNE by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE JILTED by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE WIDOW AT WINDSOR by RUDYARD KIPLING REMEMBER OR FORGET by C. HAMILTON AIDE MOUNTAIN FROLIC by GEORGE LAWRENCE ANDREWS IN MEMORY OF AGOSTINO ISOLA, OF CAMBRIDGE, WHO DIED 1797 by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS |