Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.

Lonely Burial

THERE were not many at that lonely place,

Where two scourged hills met in a little plain.

The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again.

Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race

Unseen by any. Toward the further woods

A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased.

—We were most silent in those solitudes—

Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest,

The clotted earth piled roughly up about

The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing,

Short words in swordlike Latin—and a rout

Of dreams most impotent, unwearying.

Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse,

The terrible bareness of the soul’s last house.