Grey Evening

 When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? 
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, 
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields 
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields. 

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung, 
And little stars come rolling from their husk. 

And all the earth is gone into a dust 
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, 
Covered with aged lichens, past with must,
And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey, 
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding 
With wounds of sunset and the dying day.

Form: Enclosed Rhyme

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