In a Churchyard
That flower unseen, that gem of purest ray, Bright thoughts uncut by men: Strange that you need but speak them, Thomas Gray, And the mind skips and dives beyond its ken, Finding at once
The Prisoner of Zenda
At the end a “The Prisoner of Zenda,” The King being out of danger, Stewart Granger (As Rudolph Rassendyll) Must swallow a bitter pill By renouncing his co-star, Deborah Kerr. It would be poor
To the Etruscan Poets
Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young Took with your mother’s milk the mother tongue, In which pure matrix, joining world and mind, You strove to leave some line of verse behind Like still
Museum Piece
The good gray guardians of art Patrol the halls on spongy shoes, Impartially protective, though Perhaps suspicious of Toulouse. Here dozes one against the wall, Disposed upon a funeral chair. A Degas dancer pirouettes
The Riddle
Shall I love God for causing me to be? I was mere utterance; shall these words love me? Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer, And one free subject loosened all
A Fable
Securely sunning in a forest glade, A mild, well-meaning snake Approved the adaptations he had made For safety’s sake. He liked the skin he had- Its mottled camouflage, its look of mail, And was
The Ride
The horse beneath me seemed To know what course to steer Through the horror of snow I dreamed, And so I had no fear, Nor was I chilled to death By the wind’s white
March 26, 1974
R. Frost 100th B’day The air was soft, the ground still cold. In wet dull pastures where I strolled Was something I could not believe. Dead grass appeared to slide and heave, Though still
Transit
A woman I have never seen before Steps from the darkness of her town-house door At just that crux of time when she is made So beautiful that she or time must fade. What
A Hole In The Floor
for Rene Magritte The carpenter’s made a hole In the parlor floor, and I’m standing Staring down into it now At four o’clock in the evening, As Schliemann stood when his shovel Knocked on
Exeunt
Piecemeal the summer dies; At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone; A last shawl of burning lies On a gray field-stone. All cries are thin and terse; The field has droned the summer’s
Boy at the Window
Seeing the snowman standing all alone In dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful
Wedding Toast
St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast, The water-pots poured wine in such amount That by his sober count There were a hundred gallons at the least. It made no earthly sense, unless
For K. R. on her Sixtieth Birthday
Blow out the candles of your cake. They will not leave you in the dark, Who round with grace this dusky arc Of the grand tour which souls must take. You who have sounded
Advice to a Prophet
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city, Mad-eyed from stating the obvious, Not proclaiming our fall but begging us In God’s name to have self-pity, Spare us all