Sunday War Poet.....

Anna Gordon Keown

1899-1957

Reported Missing

 My thought shall never be that you are dead:

Who laughed so lately in this quiet place.

The dear and deep-eyed humour of that face

Held something ever-living, in Death's stead.

Scornful I hear the flat things they have said

And all their piteous platitudes of pain.

I laugh! I laugh! -- For you will come again -

This heart would never beat if you were dead.

The world's adrowse in twilight hushfulness,

There's purple lilac in your little room,

And somewhere out beyond the evening gloom

Small boys are culling summer watercress.

Of these familiar things I have no dread

Being so very sure you are not dead.

Anna Gordon Keown was an English author and poet.

 The sonnet Reported Missing, which she wrote in her youth, is her best remembered work 

and is studied extensively in schools as part of the GCSE curriculum.

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