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.
“Before Quiet” was published in the July 1924 issue of Poetry.
Hazel Hall
Hazel Hall was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1886. She is the author of three published works: Curtains (John Lane Company, 1921), Walkers (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1923), and Cry of Time (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1928), which was collected by her sister and published posthumously. She was much-loved in her lifelong home state of Oregon. The Oregon Book Award is named jointly for Hall and poet William Stafford. Hall died in Portland, Oregon, in 1924.