Summary
Summary, excerpt and download Emblems Of Love by Lascelles Abercrombie for iPhone, iPad, Nook, Android, and Kindle in PDF and all popular eBook reader formats (AZW3, EPUB, MOBI).
Emblems of Love" is a poem by Lascelles Abercrombie, first published in 1909. The poem explores the themes of love, loss, and the passing of time.
The poem describes a garden that is overgrown and abandoned, where the flowers have withered away and the trees have grown wild. The speaker reflects on the memories of the past, when the garden was full of life and beauty, and he was with his lover.
As he walks through the garden, the speaker sees the emblems of love that he and his lover once shared: a broken sundial, a rusted gate, and a crumbling stone seat. These objects symbolize the decay of their relationship and the passing of time.
Despite the decay and loss, the speaker still cherishes the memories of his love and the beauty of the garden. The poem ends with a sense of acceptance and resignation, as the speaker realizes that everything in life is impermanent, and that love is a fleeting and fragile thing.
Excerpt
PART I
DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY
PRELUDE
Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking.
Gast.
This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune
Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh,
To see thee, after all these moons, returned,
My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints,
That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing,
Will be more help for us than if the dyke
Were higher by a span.—Ha! there was howling
Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.
Brys. Has there been hunger in the forest long?
Gast.
I think, not only hunger makes them fierce:
They broke not long since into a village yonder,
A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard
The feasting they kept up. And that has made
The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe.
Brys.
O fools
To keep so slack a waking on their dykes!
Now have they made a sleepless winter for us.
Every night we must look, lest the down-slope
Between us and the woods turn suddenly
To a grey onrush full of small green candles,
The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh.
And well for us then if there's no more mist
Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger.
Gast.
They'll come to-night. Three of us hunting went
Among the trees below: not long we stayed.
All the wolves of the world are in the forest,
And man's the meat they're after.
Brys.
Ay, it must be
Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night,
Such clear and starry weather.—What dost thou make,
Gast, of the stars?
Gast.
Brother, they're horrible.
I always keep my head as much as I may
Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes.