I <br /> <br />Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames <br />In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. <br />Your soul is full of cities with dead names, <br />And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone <br />Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords <br />Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, <br />Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords <br />And wizardry of ghosts. <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />In a strange house I woke; heard overhead <br />Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream... <br />(Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted, <br />Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream <br />Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day. <br />(You know how bees come into a twilight room <br />From dazzling afternoon, then sail away <br />Out of the curtained gloom.) <br /> <br />III <br /> <br />You understand my thoughts; though, when you think, <br />You’re out beyond the boundaries of my brain. <br />I’m but a bird at dawn that cries ‘chink, chink’— <br />A garden-bird that warbles in the rain. <br />And you’re the flying-man, the speck that steers <br />A careful course far down the verge of day, <br />Half-way across the world. Above the years <br />You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you’d say.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-a-very-wise-man/
