(thee will i praise between those rivers whose white voices pass upon forgetting(fail me not)whose courseless waters are a gloat of silver;o'er whose night three willows wail, a slender dimness in the unshapeful hour making dear moan in tones of stroked flower; let not thy lust one threaded moment lose: haste)the very shadowy sheep float free upon terrific pastures pale, whose tall mysterious shepherd lifts a cheek teartroubled to the momentary wind with guiding smile,lips wisely minced for blown kisses,condemnatory fingers thinned of pity—so he stands counting the moved myriads wonderfully loved, (hasten,it is the moment which shall seek all blossoms that do learn,scents of not known musics in whose careful eyes are dinned; and the people of perfect darkness fills his mind who will their hungering whispers hear with weepings soundless,saying of "alas we were chaste on earth we ghosts:hark to the sheer cadence of our grey flesh in the gloom! and still to be immortal is our doom; but a rain frailly raging whom the hills sink into and their sunsets,it shall pass. Our feet tread sleepless meadows sweet with fear") then be with me:unseriously seem by the perusing greenness of thy thought my golden soul fabulously to glue in a superior terror;be thy taut flesh silver,like the currency of faint cities eternal—ere the sinless taint of thy long sinful arms about me dream shall my love wholly taste thee as a new wine from steep hills by darkness softly brought— (be with me in the sacred witchery of almostness which May makes follow soon on the sweet heels of passed afterday, clothe thy soul's coming merely,with a croon of mingling robes musically revealed in rareness:let thy twain eyes deeply wield a noise of petals falling silently through the far-spaced possible nearaway from huge trees drenched by a rounding moon)
This poem is in the public domain.
There is more glory in a drop of dew, That shineth only for an hour, Than there is in the pomp of earth’s great Kings Within the noonday of their power. There is more sweetness in a single strain That falleth from a wild bird’s throat, At random in the lonely forest’s depths, Than there’s in all the songs that bards e’er wrote. Yet men, for aye, rememb’ring Caesar’s name, Forget the glory in the dew, And, praising Homer’s epic, let the lark’s Song fall unheeded from the blue.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 24, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Don’t be foolish. No, be foolish.
Each of these trees was once a seed.
Look down the road till it’s all mist and fumes:
Of course your journey is impossible.
It’s stupidly hot for September and yet here’s
an eddy, a gust, something to stir you
as the high leaves of the walnut are stirred,
as fine droplets touch you, touch the table
and the deck, no explanation, no design.
And beauty is like God, mystery
in plain sight, silent, hesitating
in leaves and the shadows of leaves,
in the carved fish painted and nailed
to the railing, in skeins of cloud
and searching fly and pale blue
scrim of sky and seas of emptiness
and dazzle, fusion and spin,
fire and oblivion and all that lies
on the other side of oblivion.
Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Atkinson. This poem originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Summer 2018. Used with permission of the author.