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Nobody Knows

Walter De La Mare

Often I’ve heard the Wind sigh
  By the ivied orchard wall,
Over the leaves in the dark night,
  Breathe a sighing call,
And faint away in the silence,
  While I, in my bed,
Wondered, ‘twixt dreaming and waking,
  What it said.

Nobody knows what the Wind is,
  Under the height of the sky,
Where the hosts of the stars keep far away house
  And its wave sweeps by—
Just a great wave of the air,
  Tossing the leaves in its sea,
And foaming under the eaves of the roof
  That covers me.

And so we live under deep water,
  All of us, beasts and men,
And our bodies are buried down under the sand,
  When we go again;
And leave, like the fishes, our shells,
  And float on the Wind and away,
To where, o’er the marvellous tides of the air,
  Burns day.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing: Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study | 1920
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