NO more in dreams as once it draws me there,
All fungus-grown and sunken in damp ground-
No more as once when waking I gazed down
On elms like water-weeds in moonlit air
Or heard the August downpour with its dull full sound
Drenched hedges and the hillside and the night,
The largest house in sight
And thought it sunken out of time or drowned
As hulks in Newark Bay are soaked and slowly drown.
The ugly stained-glass window on the stair,
Dark-panelled dining-room, the guinea fowl’s fierce clack,
The great gray cat that on the oven slept
My father’s study with its books and birds,
His scornful tone, his eighteenth-century words,
His green door sealed with baize
Today I travel back
To find again that one fixed point he kept
And left me for the day
In which this other world of theirs grows dank, decays,
And founders and goes down.
(Edmund Wilson)
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Edmund Wilson Poems based on Topics: Night, Sense & Perception, Time, Dreams, BirdsReaders Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Night Poems, Time Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Dreams Poems, Birds PoemsBased on Keywords: downpour, clack, founders, dining-room, hulks, baize, stained-glass, newark, eighteenth-century, water-weeds