Enigma
Enigma
Original Text
Duncan Campbell Scott, The Green Cloister: Later Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1935): 69. PS 8487 C6G7 Robarts Library
1Some men are born to gather women's tears,
2To give a harbour to their timorous fears,
3To take them as the dry earth takes the rain,
4As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain;
5Yet their own tears remain unshed,
6Their own tumultuous fears unsaid,
7And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the earth,
8Shaken are they with pain.
9They cry for voice as earth might cry for the sea
10Or the wood for consuming fire;
11Unanswered they remain
12Subject to the sorrows of women utterly --
13Heart and mind,
14Subject as the dry earth to the rain
15Or the dark wood to the wind.
Publication Start Year
1935
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme