Now is the time for the burning of the leaves, <br />They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke <br />Wandering slowly into the weeping mist. <br />Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! <br />A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites <br />On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. <br />The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust: <br />All the spices of June are a bitter reek, <br />All the extravagant riches spent and mean. <br />All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost. <br />Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild <br />Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. <br />Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare, <br />Time for the burning of days ended and done, <br />Idle solace of things that have gone before, <br />Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there: <br />Let them go to the fire with never a look behind. <br />That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more. <br />They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise <br />From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour, <br />And magical scents to a wondering memory bring; <br />The same glory, to shine upon different eyes. <br />Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours. <br />Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.<br /><br />Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-burning-of-the-leaves/
