Wordless{ish} Wednesday | Thistle

The Thistle

In a patch of baked earth

At the crumbled cliff's brink,

Where the parching of August

Has cracked a long chink,

Against the blue void

Of still sea and sky
Stands single a thistle

Tall, tarnished, and dry.

Frayed leaves, spotted brown,

Head hoary and torn

Was ever a weed
Upon earth so forlorn,

So solemnly gazed on

By the sun in his sheen

That prints in long shadow

Its raggedness lean?

From the sky comes no laughter,
From earth not a moan.

Erect stands the thistle,

Its seeds abroad blown

-Robert Laurence Binyon