The Weaver
Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)
All day, all day, round the clacking net
The weaver's fingers fly:
Gray dreams like frozen mists are set
In the hush of the weaver's eye;
A voice from the dusk is calling yet,
'Oh, come away, or we die!'
Without is a horror of hosts that fight,
That rest not, and cease not to kill,
The thunder of feet and the cry of the flight,
A slaughter weird and shrill;
Gray dreams are set in the weaver's sight,
The weaver is weaving still.
'Come away, dear soul, come away or we die;
Hear'st thou the moan and the rush! Come away;
The people are slain at the gates, and they fly;
The kind God hath left them this day;
The battle-axes cleaves, and the foemen cry,
And the red swords swing and slay.'
'Nay, wife, what boots to fly from pain,
When pain is wherever we fly?
And death is a sweeter thing than a chain:
'Tis sweeter to sleep than to cry,
The kind God giveth the days that wane;
If the kind God hath said it, I die.'
And the weaver wove, and the good wife fled,
And the city was made a tomb,
And a flame that shook from the rocks overhead
Shone into that silent room,
And touched like a wide red kiss on the dead
Brown weaver slain by his loom.
Yet I think that in some dim shadowy land,
Where no suns rise or set,
Where the ghost of a whilom loom doth stand
Round the dusk of its silken net,
Forever flyeth his shadowy hand,
And the weaver is weaving yet.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 62 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABABAB CDCDCD BEBEBE FBFBFB GHGHGH IAIAIA |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,330 |
Words | 274 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
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"The Weaver" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/3717/the-weaver>.
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