Skip to content
Linespedia

Lonely Burial

Topics: classic

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.

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"There were not many at that lonely place,..."

Stephen Vincent Benet's contribution to classic is further solidified by the brilliance found in "Lonely Burial"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,     The tiresome noises, all the common things     I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.     I"

"It was not when temptation came,     Swiftly and blastingly as flame,     And seared me white with burning scars;     When I stood up for age-l"

"The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white     Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light     Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled"

"Tobacco smoke drifts up to the dim ceiling     From half a dozen pipes and cigarettes,     Curling in endless shapes, in blue rings wheeling,"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,     The..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.