War Drums (Scharkie)/Echoes

by Louis Edward Scharkie

ECHOES.

I would sing of stone-blind hazes, blind as dead eyes of the dusk;
Swooning seas 'neath sombre sunrise, creeping creeks in moon and musk;
Mazy meres, and misty moorlands, fog-wreathes blinding pallid suns;
Twilights, purple, cowled, and pallid, as dead kings, and hooded nuns.

I would sing of broken thunders roaring over thirsty tracts;
Leaping flames in famished forests, ravines splashed with cataracts;
Wailing winds of wintry weather sobbing over lorn lagoons;
Silent midnights, pallid with the ghostly stare of winter moons.

I would sing of bird and blossom; lap and lisp of running rills;
Moon-lit peaks, like royal fathers, rising over regal hills;
Lisp of rain in clapping tree-tops; wood-winds waking up their harps;
Sunrise slanting over dingles, nestled under dewy scarps.

But alas! my heart grows weary with the thoughts that weigh it down,
And its songs are only echoes of the music it would crown.
Like, maybe, the far-off bleating of a lamb on lonely dunes,
Or the listless lap of mountain tarns to far-off misty moons.