Pict and Gael and Dane, McQuillan, Clandonnel, O’Neill,Savages, the Scot, the Norman, the English,Here in the narrow passage and the pitiless north, perpetualBetrayals, relentless resultless fighting.A random fury of dirks in the dark: a struggle for survivalOf hungry blind cells of life in the womb.But now the womb has grown old, her strength has gone…
For only slaves, is a far sweeter toil than to cutPassions in verse for a sick people.I’d liefer bed one boulder in the house-wall than be the time’sArchilochus: we name not Homer: who nowCan even imagine the fabulous dawn when bay-leaves (to a blindBeggar) were not bitter in the teeth?Submitted by Holt
Headlong convexities of forest, drawn in together to the steepravine. Below, on the sea-cliff,A lonely clearing; a little field of corn by the streamside; a roofunder spared trees. Then the oceanLike a great stone someone has cut to a sharp edge and polishedto shining. Beyond it, the fountainAnd furnace of incredible light flowing up from…
Their natural make is moribund, they cease,They carry the inward seeds of quick decay,Build breakwaters for storm but build on peace.The mountains’ peace answers the peace of the stars,Our petulances are cracked against their term.God built our peace and plastered it with wars,Those frescoes fade, flake off, peace remains firm.In the beginning before light beganWe…
And watches the track of this age of time at its peak of flightWaver like a spent rocket, wavering toward new discoveries,Mortal examinations of darkness, soundings of depth;And watches the long coast mountain vibrate from bronze to green,Bronze to green, year after year, and all the streamsDry and flooded, dry and flooded, in the racing…
Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in theirsummer, they spiralBlind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing liveslong, the whole sky’sRecurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulfbefore birth, and the gulfAfter death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch…
Of autumn pelicans nine or a dozen strung shorelong,But chiefly the gulls, the cloud-caligraphers of windy spiralsbefore a storm,Cruise north and south over the sea-rocks and overThat bluish enormous opal; very lately these alone, these and thecloudsAnd westering lights of heaven, crossed it; but thenA hull with standing canvas crept about Point Lobos . ….
And reticence: each is noble in its quality. The love of freedomhas been the quality of Western man.There is a stubborn torch that flames from Marathon to Concord,its dangerous beauty binding three agesInto one time; the waves of barbarism and civilization haveeclipsed but have never quenched it.For the Greeks the love of beauty, for Rome…
At least it provides the cure for ambition.One does not crave power in ant-hills, nor praise in a paper forest;One must not even indulge the severeRomance of separateness, as of Milton grown blind and oldIn his broken temple against the drunkards:The ants are good creatures, there is nothing to be heroic about.But the time is…
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinityMake your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyesClimb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;Things are the God;…
