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At the Last

Witter Bynner

1881 –

1968

There is no denying

That it matters little,

When through a narrow door

We enter a room together,

Which goes after, which before.

Perhaps you are not dying:

Perhaps—there is no knowing—

I shall slip by and turn and laugh with you

Because it mattered so little,

The order of our going.

This poem is in the public domain.

Witter Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1881. He graduated from Harvard University in 1902. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter and, later, as the assistant editor of McClure’s magazine.

Bynner published his first poetry collection, An Ode to Harvard (Small, Maynard, & Co.), in 1907. He was also the author of New Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Take Away the Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947); The Beloved Stranger (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919); Tiger (M. Kennerley, 1913); and several other poetry collections.

Themes

About this Poem

“At the Last” originally appeared in Grenstone Poems: A Sequence (Frederick A. Stokes, 1917).

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Lightning

There is a solitude in seeing you,
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You are like heaven’s veils of lightning.
I cannot see till afterward
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There is a blindness in seeing you,
Followed by the sight of you when you are gone.

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This veil
Of lavender and dawn
Floats off
Invisible,
And this of purple noon
Unwinds in wisdom,
Twitters, undulates,
Dips, darts,
And this of night
Circles around me singing

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War

Fools, fools, fools,
Your blood is hot to-day.
       It cools
When you are clay.
It joins the very clod
Wherein you look at God,
Wherein at last you see
       The living God
       The loving God,
Which was your enemy.

Witter Bynner

1914

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At the Last

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