How shall I know when the end of things is coming? The dark swifts flitting, the drone-bees humming; The fly on the window-pane bedazedly strumming; Ice on the waterbrooks their clear chimes dumbing -- How shall I know that the end of things is coming? The stars in their stations will shine glamorous in the black: Emptiness, as ever, haunt the great Star Sack; And Venus, proud and beautiful, go down to meet the day, Pale in phosphorescence of the green sea spray -- How shall I know that the end of things is coming? Head asleep on pillow; the peewits at their crying; A strange face in dreams to my rapt phantasma sighing; Silence beyond words of anguished passion; Or stammering an answer in the tongue's cold fashion -- How shall I know that the end of things is coming? Haply on strange roads I shall be, the moorland's peace around me; Or counting up a fortune to which Destiny hath bound me; Or -- Vanity of Vanities -- the honey of the Fair; Or a greybeard, lost to memory, on the cobbles in my chair -- How shall I know that the end of things is coming? The drummers will be drumming; the fiddlers at their thrumming; Nuns at their beads; the mummers at their mumming; Heaven's solemn Seraph stoopt weary o'er his summing; The palsied fingers plucking, the way-worn feet numbing -- And the end of things coming. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONGS ON THE VOICES OF BIRDS; SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME by JEAN INGELOW DOROTHY IN THE GARRET by JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE BALLADE OF A TRAVELLER'S JINX by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS A CALL TO ARMS by MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS SONNETS OF MANHOOD: 26. BEYOND by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) PSALM 2. QUARE FREMUERUNT GENTES by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS: 113, TO ONE WITH HIS SONNETS by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |