Explore "Histories" by Virna Sheard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I weary of the histories of men -- / The garnered store of books in grim array; / Life's bitter salvage, leather-bound, and then / Left to the silence and a bloom of gray.
I weary of the stories that they hold; / The clash of arms sounds through them like a knell; / I weary of the Kings in crowns of gold, / The Kings victorious, and the Kings who fell.
There are too many tears on every page; / Too red a tide sweeps every chapter in; / There is no word of peace in any age, / Except the peace that death rode forth to win.
And old unhappiness, long wrapped in sleep, / And thrice-armed feud that passed in wrath and woe, / And white despair from many a dungeon keep, / Arise to haunt us still, where'er we go.
Yet through the years the sun was warm and sweet, / And pipers piped at morn, and night and noon, -- / And there was carnival with dancing feet, / And love and joyance always came in June, --
O, to remember when the pages close -- / Linked with the vision of the deathless brave, -- / The nightingale, the moonlight, and the rose, / And all the beauty that the lost years gave!