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Robert Laurence Binyon - To A Derelict
Work rating: Low

O travelled far beyond unhappiness
 Into a dreadful peace!
 Why tarriest thou here? The street is bright
 With noon; the music of the tidal sound
 Of London fills the trembling air with power
 Flowing and freed around;
 No corner but is stirred
 With motion and with voices mingling heard,
 That every hour
 Bring thousand faces trooping into light
 Past thee. O hide thyself beneath the ground!
 Trouble not our sunshine longer, lest we see
 Too clearly inscribed on thee
 All that we fear to be

 What dost thou with the sun?
 Long since thy race was run.
 What spectral task employs
 Thy hands? The very boys
 That mocked thee, mock no more; they pass thee by,
 Like a dumb stone that cannot make reply.
 Yet, even as a stone
 Will from the turbulent sea
 Take voice and motion not its own,
 Words on thy lips mechanically stray
 With echoes and with gleams that fade and come
 Unrecognized, unknown.
 And as from some extinguished star
 The orphan ray
 Still vainly travels its eternal way,
 A light of meaning flickers from afar
 From what long since was dumb.
 Still at the accustomed place
 Appears thy ruined face;
 And in thy niche all the resounding day,
 `Mid busy voices haunting motionless
 Thou standest; and to every loitering eye
 Resign`st thy history.
 Alas! thou also, thou that art so cold,
 Thou also once wert young;
 And once didst hang upon thy mother`s breast
 And laugh upon thy father`s knee.
 But now thy flesh is nearer to the mould
 Than the light grass,--and still thou lingerest!
 Woe to thee now, because thou chosest ill,
 Because each hour thou didst resign
 A little more of thy slow--ebbing will,
 And to the invading silence didst assent;
 Because to Life saying for ever Nay,
 To Death thou saidest Yea,
 Who leaves thee now engraven with defeat
 In this triumphal street,
 With all that was and is no longer thine
 Yielded and spent
 At what a priceless cost.
 O face of many battles, and all lost!

 Now all thy dues paid, Death possesses thee;
 But too secure
 To occupy his easy kingdom, spares
 To enforce his title; cruelly forbears,
 And suffers thee to languish in thy lot,
 In this most woeful, that thou weepest not.
 So in some street
 Stirred with the rushing feet
 Of life that glitters and that thunders past,
 An aged house, broken and doomed at last,
 Ere yet it vanish quite,
 Abandons helpless to the light
 Spoiled sanctuaries, filled with emptiness,
 Where late the weary harboured, and young fears
 Were cradled into peace,
 And sacred kisses kissed, and private tears
 Were dried, and true hearts hid their close delight.
 But now the fires are ashes, all is bare,
 The torn, gay paper flutters old,
 And a phantasmal stair
 Climbs into floorless chambers, and hearths cold.
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