People :
Author : William Morris
Text :
Ye who have come o'er the sea
to behold this gray minster of lands,
Whose floor is the tomb of time past,
and whose walls by the toil of dead hands
Show pictures amid of the ruin
of deeds that have overpast death,
Stay by this tomb in a tomb
to ask of who lieth beneath.
Ah! the world changeth too soon,
that ye stand there with unbated breath,
As I name him that Gunnar of old,
who erst in the haymaking tide
Felt all the land fragrant and fresh,
as amid of the edges he died.
Too swiftly fame fadeth away,
if ye tremble not lest once again
The gray mound should open and show him
glad-eyed without grudging or pain.
Little labor methinks to behold him
but the tale-teller labored in vain.
Little labor for ears that may hearken
to hear his death-conquering song,
Till the heart swells to think of the gladness
undying that overcame wrong.
O young is the world yet meseemeth
and the hope of it flourishing green,
When the words of a man unremembered
so bridge all the days that have been,
As we look round about on the land
that these nine hundred years he hath seen.
Dusk is abroad on the grass
of this valley amid of the hill:
Dusk that shall never be dark
till the dawn hard on midnight shall fill
The trench under Eyiafell's snow,
and the gray plain the sea meeteth gray.
White, high aloft hangs the moon
that no dark night shall brighten ere day,
For here day and night toileth the summer
lest deedless his time pass away.
From : Marxists.org.
Chronology :
February 26, 2021 : Chapter 29 -- Added.
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