Friday, April 26, 2013

NaPoWriMo #26: In a Churchyard

the knell of parting day
slowly
plods
to darkness

Now fades        
solemn stillness
where droning
drowsy tinklings lull

Beneath       
a mouldering heap
for ever laid
The rude sleep

For them no more    
her evening
return
the envied kiss 

mock their
homely destiny          
with a smile
the poor

boast of 
beauty
Awaits
the grave
    
the fleeting breath
the silent dust
Death

Perhaps 
Some heart   
might have 
waked

to 
the spoils of time
And froze
    
The applause of  
ruin
o'er smiling
eyes

Their lot forbade
their crimes confined
wade through slaughter 
And shut the gates of mercy

The struggling pangs       
the blushes of shame
heap
the flame
    
the madding strife
wishes  
the cool sequestered vale of
noiseless tenor
    
these bones
still erected
Implores         

the unlettered muse
and
many a holy text
to die
 
the parting soul
pious drops the closing eye
Ev'n from the tomb 
Ev'n in our ashes 

mindful of the unhonoured dead
their artless tale
by lonely
kindred spirit
       
the peep of dawn
the dews
meet the sun 
at the foot of yonder nodding beech  

--April 26, 2013
Prompt: An eraser poem.  (Pick a famous poems and erase words or even whole stanzas from it, until it becomes your own.)  Taken from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

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