Silence
Silence with you is like the faint delicious
Smile of a child asleep, in dreams unguessed:
Only the hinted wonder of its dreaming,
The soft, slow-breathing miracle of rest.
Silence with you is like a kind departure
From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd
Into a wide and greenly barren meadow,
Under the bloom of some blue-bosomed cloud;
Or like one held upon the sands at evening,
When the drawn tide rolls out, and the mixed light
Of sea and sky enshrouds the far, wind-bellowed
Sails that move darkly on the edge of night.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 10, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Silence” originally appeared in Banners (George H. Doran Company, 1919).
Babette Deutsch
Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895, in New York City. A poet, critic, translator, and novelist, she is the author of ten collections of poetry, four novels, and six volumes of children’s literature, including collections of essays on poetry and poets. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1974 to 1981.
Deutsch died November 13, 1982.