Classic Poem

The dark road journeys to the darkening sky,
The twilight settles like a circling pool,
The railway bridge is lifted up on high,
And the unerring lines are beautiful

A soldier and his girl in casual walk
Pass heavily, their garments creased with woe,
Like stiff, slow-labouring statues; yet they talk
In peace, and gather comfort as they go.

In the small cabin by the railway-side
A lonely concertina by some priest
Of guileless joy is played; its sound goes wide,
Like the blunt brumming of a vague voiced beast.

I stand, and thin-toned anguish frets my heart
Over the cabin boy who all the night
Sits in his thoughtless paradise apart,
And in his lonely monologue finds delight;

And over those two, who, in half-dumb talk,
With broken gestures, and half-shapen speech,
In unintelligible rapture walk,
Too far for vain and longing thought to reach.

O why should fading form and falling sound
Such sculptured shapes of deep division take?
Why do we walk with muted footsteps round
In this strong trance called life from which none wake?

Whither do these blind-journeying lovers go?
What does he wait, the boy with idle hands?
And I who stand in idle questioning so?
We walk all four in strange and different lands.

Those lovers never will return again.
That sound has died long since within the gloam.
Why do I wait still with my foolish pain?
All, all at last must take their sorrow home