The Moonlight

Yvor Winters - 1900-1968

I waited on
In the late autumn moonlight,
A train droning out of thought—

The mind on moonlight
And on trains.

Blind as a thread of water
Stirring through a cold like dust,
Lonely beyond all silence

And humming this to children,
The nostalgic listeners in sleep,

Because no guardian
Strides through distance upon distance,
His eyes a web of sleep.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 1, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

I. IN WINTER Myself Pale mornings, and I rise. Still Morning Snow air--my fingers curl. Awakening New snow, O pine of dawn! Winter Echo Thin air! My mind is gone. The Hunter Run! In the magpie's shadow. No Being I, bent. Thin nights receding. II. IN SPRING Spring I walk out the world's door. May Oh, evening in my hair! Spring Rain My doorframe smells of leaves. Song Why should I stop for spring? III. IN SUMMER AND AUTUMN Sunrise Pale bees! O whither now? Fields I did not pick a flower. At Evening Like leaves my feet passed by. Cool Nights At night bare feet on flowers! Sleep Like winds my eyelids close. The Aspen's Song The summer holds me here. The Walker In dream my feet are still. Blue Mountains A deer walks that mountain. God of Roads I, peregrine of noon. September Faint gold! O think not here. A Lady She's sun on autumn leaves. Alone I saw day's shadow strike. A Deer The trees rose in the dawn. Man in Desert His feet run as eyes blink. Desert The tented autumn, gone! The End Dawn rose, and desert shrunk. High Valleys In sleep I filled these lands. Awaiting Snow The well of autumn--dry.

It will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks. The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old.

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, that is not mine, but is a made place, that is mine, it is so near to the heart, an eternal pasture folded in all thought so that there is a hall therein that is a made place, created by light wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. Wherefrom fall all architectures I am I say are likenesses of the First Beloved whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. She it is Queen Under The Hill whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words that is a field folded. It is only a dream of the grass blowing east against the source of the sun in an hour before the sun's going down whose secret we see in a children's game of ring a round of roses told. Often I am permitted to return to a meadow as if it were a given property of the mind that certain bounds hold against chaos, that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is.

The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem— To grope, with eerie fingers for the window—then— To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream Faith—might I awaken! And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat. Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise, And softly patters by, like little fearing feet. Faith—this weather! The feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane,— The dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,— Then closes in the night and gently falling rain. Faith—what darkness!

Poems

The Moonlight

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