Dawn slips within my room to say good-by: 
Buffeted, bruised, by autumn rain 
All night, 
While I lay sleeping, held to dreams, again 
She comes from out the violated sky, 
Dragging her tarnished light.

With dim leaves drooping, hanging all about 
Her misty face, her eyes still wet, 
She stands 
Disconsolate beneath her veils—and yet 
Bravely she spills one last bird’s note from out 
Her summer-empty hands.

I have gone back in boyish wonderment

To things that I had foolishly put by . . . . 

Have found an alien and unknown content 

In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky 

Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours 

Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously

Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers, 

That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly. 



Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed

Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song 

Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade, 

There I have lain while hours sauntered past—

I have found peacefulness somewhere at last, 

Have found a quiet needed for so long. 

I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore,
By a lonely isle, by a far Azore,
There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek,
On the barren sands of a desolate creek

You are an ice covered twig

with a quiet, smiling sap

The spring winds of life

have tested your steel-blade soul

and the harsh breath of men

covered you with a frigid shell.

But under the transparent ice

I have seen your warm hand

ready to tear the shell

and grasp the love-sun’s heat,

and your cool morning eyes

look clear and calm into the day.

With a ring of silver,

        And a ring of gold, 

    And a red, red rose

         Which illumines her face, 

The sun, like a lover

    Who glows and is bold, 

Wooes the lovely earth 

   To his strong embrace. 

O day—if I could cup my hands and drink of you, 
And make this shining wonder be 
A part of me! 
O day! O day!
You lift and sway your colors on the sky 
Till I am crushed with beauty. Why is there 
More of reeling sunlit air 
Than I can breathe? Why is there sound 
In silence? Why is a singing wound 
About each hour? 
And perfume when there is no flower? 
O day! O Day! How may I press 
Nearer to loveliness?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Wave of sorrow,

Do not drown me now:

I see the island

Still ahead somehow.

I see the island

And its sands are fair:

Wave of sorrow,

Take me there.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Out of the night that covers me,   

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   

I thank whatever gods may be   

  For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   

Under the bludgeonings of chance   

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   

Beyond this place of wrath and tears   

  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years   

  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   

It matters not how strait the gate,   

  How charged with punishments the scroll,   

I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.

Prisoners are we,

American citizens imprisoned

For daring in the name of Democracy

To protest against the continued denial

Of the right of self-government

To twenty millions of the American people.

We lie in a dungeon

Long ago abandoned and condemned,

Just as politically we are held

Imprisoned in a subjection

Abandoned and condemned

By every other nation of English speech and spirit.

Painfully raising my head,

I look down the long row

Of gray-blanketed heaps.

Under every heap a woman,

Weak, sick, but determined,

Twenty gray fortresses of determination.

Come forth, you workers! 

Let the fires go cold—

Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—

Let the iron run wild

Like a red bramble on the floors—

Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine 

And the shrapnel lying on the wharves—

Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—

Come, 

With your ashen lives, 

Your lives like dust in your hands. 

I call upon you, workers. 

It is not yet light 

But I beat upon your doors. 

You say you await the Dawn

But I say you are the Dawn. 

Come, in your irresistible unspent force 

And make new light upon the mountains. 

You have turned deaf ears to others—

Me you shall hear. 

Out of the mouths of turbines, 

Out of the turgid throats of engines,

Over the whisling steam, 

You shall hear me shrilly piping. 

Your mills I shall enter like the wind, 

And blow upon your hearts,

Kindling the slow fire. 

They think they have tamed you, workers—

Beaten you to a tool

To scoop up a hot honor 

Till it be cool—

But out of the passion of the red frontiers

A great flower trembles and burns and glows

And each of its petals is a people. 

Come forth, you workers—

Clinging to your stable

And your wisp of warm straw—

Let the fires grow cold,

Let the iron spill out of the troughs, 

Let the iron run wild

Like a red bramble on the floors . . . 

As our forefathers stood on the prairies 

So let us stand in a ring, 

Let us tear up their prisons like grass

And beat them to barricades—

Let us meet the fire of their guns

With a greater fire, 

Till the birds shall fly to the mountains

For one safe bough. 

Though I was dwelling in a prison house, 

My soul was wandering by the carefree stream

Through fields of green with gold eyed daisies strewn, 

And daffodils and sunflower cavaliers. 

And near me played a little browneyed child, 

A winsome creature God alone conceived, 

“Oh, little friend,” I begged. “Give me a flower

That I might bear it to my lonely cell.” 

He plucked a dandelion, an ugly bloom, 

But tenderly he placed it in my hand, 

And in his eyes I saw the sign of love. 

‘Twas then the dandelion became a rose. 

All that night I walked alone and wept.
I tore a rose and dropped it on the ground.
My heart was lead; all that night I kept
Listening to hear a dreadful sound.

A tree bent down and dew dripped from its hair.
The earth was warm; dawn came solemnly.
I stretched full-length upon the grass and there
I said your name but silence answered me.

Great wonder that my blood spurts ruby red
And not a green and slimy stream instead—
That all my tears are salt, not bitter gall,
That I still live, and love and laugh at all!
And that my teeth are lustrous, pearly white,
Instead of blue cold blades that clash at night.
Why do you stand aloof and bid me pray,
You who sow strife and pain upon my way?
How does my soul live on mauled by hate’s rod?
You cannot know ’twas made by One called God.

The saddest day will have an eve,
     The darkest night, a morn;
Think not, when clouds are thick and dark,
     Thy way is too forlorn.

For ev’ry cloud that e’er did rise,
     To shade thy life’s bright way,
And ev’ry restless night of pain,
     And ev’ry weary day,

Will bring thee gifts, thou’lt value more,
     Because they cost so dear;
The soul that faints not in the storm,
     Emerges bright and clear.

I return the bitterness,
   Which you gave to me;
When I wanted loveliness
   Tantalant and free.

I return the bitterness
   It is washed by tears;
Now it is a loveliness
   Garnished through the years.

I return it loveliness,
   Having made it so;
For I wore the bitterness
   From it long ago.

Where she steps a whir,
Like dust about her feet,
Follows after her
Down the dustless street.

Something struggles there:
The forces that contend
Violently as to where
Her pathway is to end.

Issues, like great hands, grip
And wrestle for her tread;
One would strive to trip,
And one would go ahead.

Conflicting strengths in her 
Grapple to guide her feet,
Raising an unclean whir,
Like dust, upon the street.

CHILD.
O Mother, lay your hand on my brow!
O mother, mother, where am I now?
Why is the room so gaunt and great? 
Why am I lying awake so late?

MOTHER.
Fear not at all: the night is still.
Nothing is here that means you ill -
Nothing but lamps the whole town through,
And never a child awake but you.

CHILD.
Mother, mother, speak low in my ear,
Some of the things are so great and near,
Some are so small and far away,
I have a fear that I cannot say,
What have I done, and what do I fear,
And why are you crying, mother dear?

MOTHER.
Out in the city, sounds begin
Thank the kind God, the carts come in!
An hour or two more, and God is so kind,
The day shall be blue in the window-blind,
Then shall my child go sweetly asleep,
And dream of the birds and the hills of sheep.

Ghosts of all my lovely sins,

     Who attend too well my pillow,

Gay the wanton rain begins;

     Hide the limp and tearful willow.

Turn aside your eyes and ears,

     Trail away your robes of sorrow,

You shall have my further years,—

     You shall walk with me tomorrow.

I am sister to the rain;

     Fey and sudden and unholy,

Petulant at the windowpane,

     Quickly lost, remembered slowly.

I have lived with shades, a shade;

     I am hung with graveyard flowers.

Let me be tonight arrayed

     In the silver of the showers.

Every fragile thing shall rust;

     When another April passes

I may be a furry dust,

     Sifting through the brittle grasses.

All sweet sins shall be forgot;

     Who will live to tell their siring?

Hear me now, nor let me rot

     Wistful still, and still aspiring.

Ghosts of dear temptations, heed;

     I am frail, be you forgiving.

See you not that I have need

     To be living with the living?

Sail, tonight, the Styx’s breast;

     Glide among the dim processions

Of the exquisite unblest,

     Spirits of my shared transgressions. 

Roam with young Persephone,

     Plucking poppies for your slumber …

With the morrow, there shall be

     One more wraith among your number.