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.