One might dream badly.
In beautiful seas a beautiful
And sainted island, but the dark earth so shallow on the rock
Gorged with bad meat.
Kings buried in the lee of the saint,
Kings of fierce Norway, blood-boltered Scotland, bitterly dreaming
Treacherous Ireland.
Imagine what delusions of grandeur,
What suspicion-agonized eyes, what jellies of arrogance and terror
This earth has absorbed.
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I
No, like a drunkard’s last half-dollarShoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, droveThe teeth of the little jagged wheels so deepThey tasted blood; the mare with four slim hoovesOn a foot of ground pivoted like a top,Jumped from the crumble…
I
A group of men labored at the steep curveWhere it falls from the north to Mill Creek. They scattered and hidBehind cut banks, except one blond young manWho stooped over the rock and strolled away smilingAs if he shared a secret joke with the dynamite;It waited until he had passed back of a boulder,Then split…
A desert of weed and water-darkened stone under my western windows
And many pieces of humanity, men, women, and children, gathering shellfish,Swarmed with voices of gulls the sea-breach.At twilight they went off together, the verge was left vacant, anevening heronBent broad wings over the black ebb,And left me wondering why a lone bird was dearer to me that many people.Well: rare is dear: but also I…
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Out of the slack, the slow westSombering its torch; a ship’s lightShows faintly, far out,Over the weight of the prone oceanOn the low cloud.Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of…
One who sees giant Orion, the torches of winter midnight,
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…
Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
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;…