PRE-EXISTENCE
by: Frances Cornford
- LAID me
down upon the shore
- And dreamed a little space;
- I heard the great waves break and roar;
- The sun was on my face.
-
- My idle hands and fingers brown
- Played with the pebbles grey;
- The waves came up, the waves went down,
- Must thundering and gay.
-
- The pebbles, they were smooth and round
- And warm upon my hands,
- Like little people I had found
- Sitting among the sands.
-
- The grains of sand so shining-small
- Soft through my fingers ran;
- The sun shone down upon it all,
- And so my dream began:
-
- How all of this had been before:
- How ages far away
- I lay on some forgotten shore
- As here I lie today.
-
- The waves came shining up the sands,
- As here today they shine;
- And in my pre-Pelasgian hands
- The sand was warm and fine.
-
- I have forgotten whence I came,
- Or what my home might be,
- Or by what strange and savage name
- I called that thundering sea.
-
- I only know the sun shone down
- As still it shines today,
- And in my fingers long and brown
- The little pebbles lay.
'Pre-existence' is reprinted from
An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London:
Methuen & Co., 1921. |
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