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Siegfried Sassoon - To A Very Wise Man
Work rating: Low

I

Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames   
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.   
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,   
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone   
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts,   
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords   
And wizardry of ghosts.   
   
II

In a strange house I woke; heard overhead   
Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream… 
(Is death like that?)… I quaked uncomforted,   
Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream   
Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day.   
(You know how bees come into a twilight room   
From dazzling afternoon, then sail away 
Out of the curtained gloom.)   
   
III

You understand my thoughts; though, when you think,   
You’re out beyond the boundaries of my brain.   
I’m but a bird at dawn that cries ‘chink, chink’—   
A garden-bird that warbles in the rain. 
And you’re the flying-man, the speck that steers   
A careful course far down the verge of day,   
Half-way across the world. Above the years   
You soar… Is death so bad?… I wish you’d say.
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