A Lonely Place
Edward Shanks 1892 (London) – 1953
The leafless trees, the untidy stack
Last rainy summer raised in haste,
Watch the sky turn from fair to black
And watch the river fill and waste;
But never a footstep comes to trouble
The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn,
Or pigeons rising from late stubble
And flashing lighter as they turn.
Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine
Sharp on the road or soft on grass:
Silence divides along my line
And shuts behind me as I pass.
No other comes, no labourer
To cut his shaggy truss of hay,
Along the road no traveller,
Day after day, day after day.
And even I, when I come here,
Move softly on, subdued and still,
Lonely as death, though I can hear
Men shouting on the other hill.
Day after day, though no one sees,
The lonely place no different seems;
The trees, the stack, still images
Constant in who can say whose dreams?
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 47 sec read
- 5 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FGFG FHFH XIXI |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 811 |
Words | 159 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"A Lonely Place" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/55048/a-lonely-place>.
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