Poem
Saunders, Whitelaw & Powers, Jessica & Hicky, Daniel Whitehead & Leonard, Dorothy & Lawrence, Gordon & Snow, Ralph Waldo
May 15, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 49 POEMS Of Beauty Aloof and Rejected Now a tall tiger, proud in black and gold, Walks with soft tread across the jungle mold, And one lean eagle mounts a lonely...
...May 15, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 49 POEMS Of Beauty Aloof and Rejected Now a tall tiger, proud in black and gold, Walks with soft tread across the jungle mold, And one lean eagle mounts a lonely sky To mark the spot where some fat sheep shall die...
...To marvel at the trumpetings of thunder Blowing down the sky...
...Jessica Powers...
...He showed a conscious pride in the rich yield Of soft dark loam that opened its white steam Against the sun's warm light and turned its back Of sod and weeds once more into the earth, As it had done with each spring's sudden birth For seasons upon end...
...A dog with rabies Won his rapt eyes and tender ministry, But music stirred no answer in his breast, Nor sunsets, nor the beauty in a tree...
...The Flood There is a secret fiery flood That oozes out of lichen horns Or burns like little beads of blood Too wickedly alive, in thorns...
...All Ye little birds of God that sing and fly, From you I hide this bright bird of my breast, For if you saw his far-winged journeying You would fold your wings...
...O wild geese honking home across the sky...
...O curlews with your bleak and empty call...
...Jan kept no track Of uneventful things—save notes and babies, Crops and taxes and all the rest Occurring upon farms...
...Ralph Waldo Snow...
...Daniel Whitehead Hicky...
...Dorothy Leonard...
...O whippoorwills that sob against a tree And larks of incoherent happiness...
...Never See a Lovely Tree I never see a lovely hill But see a shadow on its brow...
...Gordon Lawrencb...
...The caterpillar's warning kiss...
...O orioles brilliant in your song and dress...
...Tor trait of a Farmer At seven o'clock Jan hitched the double team To the new plow and drove them on the field...
...Like blue incarnate essence of the sky Through heavy leaves a sapphire butterfly Drifts in an unknown land from bud to flower Down a black aisle beneath white trees that tower Like buttressed temples, Babel-tall and old...
...Grief sang its song upon a mount Where triple crosses wrought a crown, And every lovely hill I see Has three ghost-shadows peering down...
...A whitened cherry tree that holds The dead hands of a tiny bough...
...A spume, a flake, a spark, a spar, A hue Proserpina distils, Tiny and temperate like a star And only death so hugely spills...
...A sign upon a wing, a mote From columbine to clematis...
...In snow-dense forests whiskered lynxes wail In blackness to plump, cautious mates...
...Whitelaw Saunders...
...ong of the Immortal Soul O little birds of the air that call to me...
...O robins sweet in April twilight...
...a shattering rose That gives its petals in a faint surrender When summer with her tattered garments goes— God, let me seek a child beneath the skies And find my whole lost world within its eyes...
...you would lay your songs to rest If you listened behind the stars and heard him sing...
...The pale Impartial moon lights branches in cold woods And lusters smoldering mountains' icy hoods...
...to wonder at the spring That lifts the tulips' cups and gives a stem That long was bare a sudden burst of flame— To thrill at seeing how a diadem Of stars makes hills too lovely for a name— And if at last, I fail to see the splendor Of plum trees white as nuns...
...The moon in white, the sun in yellow, throw On the unthoughtful earth their precious glow, And the vast clouds of heaven mold impearled The morning and the evening of the world...
...It flickers over windy floors And yet the world is unconsumed...
...The Lost World And if at last my heart has ceased to wonder, To wonder at the flashing of a wing...
...Their ancient trunks thick cable vines enfold, And scarce a flame of tropic sky is seen Lost in the myriad garlands of bold green...
...The day I saw it lick our doors The cardinal in the valley bloomed...
...A mote upon a minim's throat...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 2
