14 quotes
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
A Witness Tree (1942)
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
A Witness Tree (1942)
They've tried to grasp with too much social fact
Too large a situation.
A Witness Tree (1942)
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.
A Witness Tree (1942)
She drew back; he was calm
"It is this that had the power,"
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.
A Witness Tree (1942)
We can't appraise the time in which we act.
But for the folly of it, let's pretend
We know enough to know it for adverse.
A Witness Tree (1942)
Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length
A Witness Tree (1942)
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease.
A Witness Tree (1942)
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it.
A Witness Tree (1942)
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
A Witness Tree (1942)
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
A Witness Tree (1942)
I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.
A Witness Tree (1942)
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
A Witness Tree (1942)
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.
A Witness Tree (1942)