John Crowe Ransom

Dead Boy

The little cousin is dead, by foul subtraction, A green bough from Virginia’s aged tree, And none of the county kin like the transaction, Nor some of the world of outer dark, like me.

Bells For John Whiteside's Daughter

There was such speed in her little body, And such lightness in her footfall, It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all Her wars were bruited in our high window. We looked

The Equilibrists

Full of her long white arms and milky skin He had a thousand times remembered sin. Alone in the press of people traveled he, Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory. Mouth he remembered:

Piazza Piece

I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small And listen to an old man not at all, They want the young men’s whispering and

Captain Carpenter

Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime Put on his pistols and went riding out But had got wellnigh nowhere at that time Till he fell in with ladies in a rout. It was

The friar had said his paternosters duly And scourged his limbs, and afterwards would have slept; But with much riddling his head became unruly, He arose, from the quiet monastery he crept. Dawn lightened

Winter Remembered

Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing. Think not, when

Painted Head

By dark severance the apparition head Smiles from the air a capital on no Column or a Platonic perhaps head On a canvas sky depending from nothing; Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur

Prelude to an Evening

Do not enforce the tired wolf Dragging his infected wound homeward To sit tonight with the warm children Naming the pretty kings of France. The images of the invaded mind Being as the monsters

Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward Under the towers of your seminary, Go listen to your teachers old and contrary Without believing a word. Tie the white fillets then about your hair And

Conrad in Twilight

Conrad, Conrad, aren’t you old To sit so late in your mouldy garden? And I think Conrad knows it well, Nursing his knees, too rheumy and cold To warm the wraith of a Forest