Poems

Find and share the perfect poems.

Before Quiet

I will think of water-lilies
Growing in a darkened pool,
And my breath shall move like water,
And my hands be limp and cool.

It shall be as though I waited
In a wooden place alone;
I will learn the peace of lilies
And will take it for my own.

If a twinge of thought, if yearning
Come like wind into this place,
I will bear it like the shadow
Of a leaf across my face.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 25, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

More by this poet

Disputed Tread

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.

Hazel Hall

1922

Flash

I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. They cannot even die
Who have not lived.

Hazel Hall

1921

The Circle

Dreams—and an old, old waking,

An unspent vision gone;

Night, clean with silence, breaking

Into loud dawn.

A wonder that is blurring

The new day’s strange demands,

The indomitable stirring

Of folded hands.

Then only the hours’ pageant

And the drowsing sound of their creep,

Bringing at last the vagrant

Dreams of new sleep.

Hazel Hall

1921

Poems

Page submenu block

Before Quiet

More by this poet

Newsletter Sign Up