Robert Laurence Binyon

I Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and…

I know that there are slumbrous woods beyond On islands of white marges, where the tide Floods upward, blue as a kingfisher's wing,
And sails, like wishes of a reverie,
Shine to the wind that fills them, far inland.
I know that…

In the shadow of a broken house,
Down a deserted street,
Propt walls, cold hearths, and phantom stairs,
And the silence of dead feet —…

Gross, with protruding ears,
Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert,
Red, full, and satisfied,
Cased in obtuseness confident not to be hurt,He sits at a little table…

How dark, how quiet sleeps the vale below!
In the dim farms, look, not a window shines:
Distantly heard among the lonely pines,
How soft the languid autumn breezes flow…

In the high leaves of a walnut,
On the very topmost boughs,
A boy that climbed the branching bole His cradled limbs would house.
On the airy bed that rocked him Long, idle hours he'd lie Alone with white clouds sailing The warm…

A day that is boundless as youth
And gay with delight to be born,
Where the waves flash and glide over sands
In their pure image rippled and worn;…

A far look in absorbed eyes, unaware Of what some gazer thrills to gather there;
A happy voice, singing to itself apart,
That pulses new blood through a listener's heart;
Old fortitude; and, 'mid an hour of dread,

High on the mountain, shrouded in vast trees,
The stillness had the chastity of frost.
I trod the fallen pallors of the moon.
The path was paven stone:

Now in thy splendour go before us.
Spirit of England, ardent-eyed,
Enkindle this dear earth that bore
In the hour of peril purified.

Now that I have won
Long despaired of peace,
And those fears are flown
That vext so my heart's ease;Shall I wish my love…

Уж если даже Рим
Держал ты в мощном клинче,
То кто бойцом таким
Не восхитится нынче?И города, и хлеб…

In misty blue the lark is heard
Above the silent homes of men;
The bright--eyed thrush, the little wren,
The yellow--billed sweet--voiced blackbird…

Trefoil and Quatrefoil!
What shaped those destinied small silent
Or numbered them under the soil?
I lift my dazzled

Thinking of shores that I shall never see,
And things that I would know but am forbid
By Time and briefness, treasuries locked from me
In unknown tongue or human bosom hid,Knowing how unsure is all my knowledge, doled…

IOut of the Forest into a terrible splendour
Of noon, the pinnacles of the temple--portals,
Stone Faces, immense in carven ruin
Above the trembling of giant trees emerge.Stone Faces, of secret and eternal smile,…

Drinking wide, sunny wind,
Hand within hand,
We look from hill to hill
Of our own land.Hand within hand, we remember…

The bare branches rose against the gray sky.
Under them, freshly fallen, snow shone to the eye.Up the hill--slope, over the brow it shone,
Spreading an immaterial beauty to tread upon.In the elbow of black boughs it clung, nested white,
And smooth below it slept in the solitude of its light.It was deep to the knee in the hollow; there in a stump of wood…

Many dreams I have dreamed
That are all now gone.
The world, mirrored in a dark pool,
How unearthly it shone!But now I have comfort…

Isles of the Aegean, Troy, and waters of Hellespont!
You we have known from of old,
Since boyhood stammering glorious Greek was entranced
In the tale that Homer told.…

The rain was ending, and
Lifting the leaden skies.
It shone upon ceiling and
And dazzled a child's eyes.

In a vision of the night I saw them,
In the battles of the night. 'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood They were moving like light,
Light of the reason, guarded Tense within the will,
As a lantern under a tossing of…

The winds of all the world bring agonies,
Day by day, hour by hour, into our ears;
Not only desolation, blood, and tears,
But cloud on cloud of suffocating lies.

Like the bloom on a grape is the evening air
And a first faint frost the wind has bound.
Yet the fear of his breath avails to scare
The withered leaves on the cold ground.For they huddle and whisper in phantom throngs,…