English Poetry. Stephen Vincent Benet. Lonely Burial. Стивен Винсент Бене.

Stephen Vincent Benet (Стивен Винсент Бене)

Lonely Burial


There were not many at that lonely place, 
Where two scourged hills met in a little plain. 
The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again. 
Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race 
Unseen by any. Toward the further woods 
A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased. 
-- We were most silent in those solitudes -- 
Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest, 

The clotted earth piled roughly up about 
The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing, 
Short words in swordlike Latin -- and a rout 
Of dreams most impotent, unwearying. 
Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse, 
The terrible bareness of the soul’s last house.

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