Picture Show (Sassoon collection)/To a Very Wise Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

TO A VERY WISE MAN

IFires in the dark you build; tall quivering flamesIn the huge midnight forest of the unknown.Your soul is full of cities with dead names,And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stoneWhose priests and kings and lust-begotten lordsWatch the procession of their thundering hosts,Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swordsAnd wizardry of ghosts.

IIIn a strange house I woke; heard overheadHastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream. . .(Is death like that?) . . .I quaked uncomforted,Striving to frame to-morrow in a dreamOf woods and sliding pools and cloudless day.(You know how bees come into a twilight roomFrom dazzling afternoon, then sail awayOut of the curtained gloom.)

IIIYou understand my thoughts; though, when you think,You're out beyond the boundaries of my brain.I'm but a bird at dawn that cries 'chink, chink'—A garden-bird that warbles in the rain.And you're the flying-man, the speck that steersA careful course far down the verge of day,Half-way across the world. Above the yearsYou soar. . .Is death so bad? . . .I wish you'd say.