Ghosts crying down the vistas of the years,
Recalling words
Whose echoes long have died,
And kind moss grown
Over the sharp and blood-bespattered stones
Which cut our feet upon the ancient ways.
But who will look for my coming?
Long busy days where many meet and part;
Crowded aside
Remembered hours of hope;
And city streets
Grown dark and hot with eager multitudes
Hurrying homeward whither respite waits.
But who will seek me at nightfall?
Light fading where the chimneys cut the sky;
Footsteps that pass,
Nor tarry at my door.
And far away,
Behind the row of crosses, shadows black
Stretch out long arms before the smouldering sun.
But who will give me my children?
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Comments
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English Literature A-Level
From guest Lewis ellway (contact)
Very good to see a site that preserves our modern, original poetry. Brittain is a truly worthy poet, whose poetry echoes the problem which evoke reverberations in our lives even today. -
Definitely a cry from the heart. Life must have been pretty cruel to her to write with such passion.
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A cry from the heart from a lady who lost many people she loved between 1914 - 1918 including her fiance`.
In her autobiography ' Testament of Youth', in 1978 she wrote: " It was hard for her to laugh unconstrainedly; at the back of her mind the row upon row of wooden crosses were planted too deeply." -
Brittain makes her protagonist feel like a superflous person when the soldiers grab all the headlines. Makes her feel lost, left and useless when her soldier doesn't return after the war.
That may have been the situation almost a century since when this was written but what of today? -
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sadness
From guest emzilly (contact)
this illistrates beautifully the worry and the loss and the sadness and pointlessness of war in such a solemn tone it is hard not to feel pity for the poet.
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