Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
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From guest Sally (contact)
Oo,i kno tha question bou the line lenghts!!They short,like life is short & then the death ones signify death....i fink!?Same wi the poem,the poems short jus like life is! -
I just have to do this:
Long, long the death it dies
in the white hours of young-leafed June
with chestnut flowers,
with hedges snowlike strewn, white lilac bowed,
lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
and that high-builded cloud moving at summer's pace.
because I wanted to see what it would read like if taken out of the rhyming quatrain form. What's delightful about poetry like this is that you have to read it twice, at least, once to ride the rhymes and once to catch the meaning. Larking achieves his effect with masterful use of enjambement.
I don't know why he moves from 4 syllable lines to 6 syllable lines; maybe someone else out there will figure that out. I would think that a poet of his skill did this as a conscious choice, not by accident.
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