Edward Estlin Cummings

“ Dreaming their boundless striving should devise
⁠A symbol whereby men might know that he
⁠Who wins his way on earth to victory,
Thus in his consummated sorrow dies.
All things are sacred to that tender sight:
⁠Time's ancient altars whence strange incense curled
Innocent to the unknown gods; the light
⁠Of love is thine; faith's banner is unfurled,
Even where the farthest watchmen, through the night,
⁠Call on the cloud-wrapped ramparts of the world. ”

“ That swirl and swoop and meet, to break and foam
Like rainbow veils upon a bubble’s dome.
Yours are the songs that burst about my ears,
Or blow away as many-colored spheres.
You are the star that made the skies all bright,
Yet tore itself away in flaming flight;
You are the tree that suddenly awoke;
You are the rose that came to life and spoke. . . . ”

“ And never boast your dead beauties,
you greatest lovers in the world!
never boast your beauties dead
who with Grania strangely fled,
who with Egypt went to bed,
whom white-thighed Semiramis
put up her mouth to wholly kiss—
never boast your dead beauties,
mine being unto me sweeter
(of whose why delicious glance
things which never more shall be,
perfect things of faerie,
are intense inhabitants;
in whose warm superlative
body do distinctly live
all sweet cities passed away—
in her flesh at break of day
are the smells of Nineveh,
in her eyes when day is gone
are the cries of Babylon.) ”

“ The big
fear Who held us deeply in His fist is
no longer, can you imagine it
i can’t which doesn’t matter
and what does is possibly this dear, that we may resume
impact with the inutile collide
once more with the imaginable, love, and eat sunlight (do
you believe it? j begin to and that doesn’t matter) which
i suggest teach us a new terror always
which shall brighten
carefully these things we consider life. ”

“ But will the promise given keep?
Can the heart love still when 'tis dead?
What if the spirit, waked from sleep,
Never recall the words it said?
Dwell in a dreamland, or else be
Lost in life's eternity? ”

“ For, poorly-clad, she is strangely proud,
And will not sit at the servants' board,
But saith she comes of the snow."
"She shall sit by me," he sware amain;
"Go, ere another ash-stick chars,
Ask of her whom she loves." ”

“ A few late friends will turn, with trembling breath,
From the raw mound of earth that hides my face. ...
Yet I shall still find beauty, even in death,
And some lone traveller of the night will hear
An echo of music in that quiet place. ”

“ I
after all white horses are in bed
will you walking beside me, my very lady,
if scarcely the somewhat city
wiggles in considerable twilight
touch (now) with a suddenly unsaid
gesture lightly my eyes? ”

“ Blossom the souls of them that died.
O Dead awake! Arise in bloom
Upon the joyous dawn of doom.
They rise up from the bleeding earth
In gracious legions of re-birth,
Each as a flower or a tree
Of verdant immortality. ”

“ His lonely song of love and tears;
He too, sad heart, hath turned to rest,
And sleep is best
Flower of my soul! Let us be true
To youth and love and all delight,
Clean and refreshed and one with you ”

“ Sweet as a maiden, lissome as this lad,
Full of rich merriment and gentle joy;
That other England lives and laughs in thee,
A peal of morris-music, blithe and glad,
Thou spray of bloom! Thou flower of a boy! ”

“ More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar.
Love, ah-h! love me, love me!
If you will do this, I can buy
A fringed silk scarf of yellow,
A high comb carved of tortoise;
Then we will dance in the Plaza.
She was alone that night.
He had broken into her courtyard,
Above the gurgling gutters
he heard—
surely—
a door unchained?
The passage was black; but he risked it—
death in the darkness—
or her hot arms— (love—love me ah-h-h!) ”

“ BETWEEN rounded hills,
White with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills
The little breeze that makes the birch-leaves quiver,
Beside a rollicking swift river,
Light green in the deeps,—
Like your eyes in sunshine,—
Winds the canal,
Lazy and brown as a water-snake,
Full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps
The water with gossamer garments, that shake
The reeds standing sentinel,
And the marginal line
Of birches and willows. ”

“ Art thou not Helen, dowered of the gods
With all that man can covet? Wert thou not
Created the most beautiful of earth,
And is not beauty wisdom, wisdom power?
What hast thou done with their almighty gift? ”

“ Nor is there any mournful ghost
To wail until the night is sped.
And while night rustles through the trees,
Dragging the stars along, I know
The moon is rising on the breeze,
Quivering as in a river's flow. ”

“ Grow lovelier there.
He who adores too much the impending hour,
The budding flower,
Who knows not with what dyes an hour that's dead
Is garmented,
Who walks with glimmering shapes companionless,
He cannot guess
With how great love and thankfulness I praise
The yesterdays. ”

“ And on Death's blade like many a flower curled,
In other lands where other songs be sung;
Yet stand They here enraptured, as among
The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
Some silver-fingered fountain steals the world. ”

“ It was some trick—the way your eyebrows raise,
Your hands—some vivid trifle. With a start
Then I remembered how I lived alone,
Writing bad poems and eating out my heart
All for your beauty. —How the time has flown! ”

“ DEEP in a heart, beneath o'er-hanging boughs,
Love built himself a house,
And whoso entered in, Love bade him stay,
Nor ever from that feast to come away
Dissatisfied or weary of the fare
Love set him there. ”

“ Now in the autumn?
See where the swallows fly
South o'er the ocean:
Soon will the winter wind
Sweep the Ægean.
Up from the vineyard comes
Music of laughter;
Far through the valleys they
Gather the harvest. ”

“ His heart, as mine in time not far away;
If on another's face your sweet hair lay
In such a silence as I know, or such
Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay ”

“ A beached king's galley, whose sails are furled,
Who is hung with tapestries rich and old.
Beautiful as a woman is she,
A woman whose autumn of life is here,
Proud and calm at the end of the year
With the grace that now is majesty. ”

“ Dripping with golden fire, above the haze,
Flashes and veers against the sudden blaze
Of sunlight. There no other wings may gleam
But only yours, companioning my dream
In its strange flight up new and radiant ways. ”

“ CALM little figure, ivy-crowned,
How long beneath the barren tree
Where this pale, martyred god has found
Surcease from his long agony,
You watch with an untroubled gaze
Life move on its accustomed ways! ”

“ A mile away the trim New England town
Echoed the Bacchanalian din they made.
And still they danced, until the moon sank low,
Blushing a little, and night's diadem
Of stars grew pale before the eastern glow. ... ”

“ Will wake again my desecrated skies.
Oh, that another dawn might never rise! —
My foolish children!" Through the vast of night
The young stars shivered in a silver horde
Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord. ”

“ OUR loves as flowers fall to dust;
The noblest singing hath an end;
No man to his own soul may trust,
Nor to the kind arms of his friend;
Yet have I glimpsed by lonely tree,
Bright baths of immortality. ”

“ We see them not, but if by chance we stray
Down cypress aisles when the wan summer day
Draws to a thin and sickly close, we hear
Murmur of mad speech by some watery weir
Or languid laughter and faint sound of play.
They never see the dawn ”

“ Where the frail stars quiver, every one
Like tangled gnats that hum and die.
The moon has tangled the dull night
In her silver skein and set alight
Each dew-damp branch with milky flame.
And huge the moon broods on the night. ”

“ While others wrote in steel, accept all praise
Of after ages, and of hungering days
For whom the old glories move, the old trumpets cry;
Who gav'st as one of those immortal men
His life that his fair city might not die. ”

“ Grotesque, distorted by the gas flare's light —
Into one sacred rhythm for the Devil's spite.
A woman's thin, raucous voice
Carries the tune, bids men rejoice,
Bathe in God's mercy,
Draw near and learn salvation, see
With their own eyes the mystery. ”

“ THE music beats, up the chasmed street,
Then flares from around the curve;
The cheers break out from the waving crowd:
—Our soldiers march, superb!
Over the track-lined city street
The young men, the grinning men, pass. ”

“ Of palaces whose light glowed on our sail;
There we floated wrapped in wild perfume;
Then music burst upon us in a gale;
Grave, deep-toned trumpets and the lyre's long wail,
And farther, the faint sound of singing men. ”

“ A DULL SUNDAY
(After Debussy)
IT has been a long day,
A long, long day;
And now in floods of twilight,
In long green waves of sunset softly flowing,
Evening.
It is evening over the great towns,
It is evening in our hearts. ”

“ For, though I see it flowering there,
Because our speech is not the same
The passionate secret must lie hid
Burdened with unexpressed delight,
Where none of all man's race can bid
It forth, or voice its beauty right. ”

“ About its summit soaring seagulls fly,
Or rest them in its lofty cypress trees,
And greet the black barge bearing those who die
Upon our earth to everlasting ease
And pleasant lives that know not man's eternities. ”

“ Aloof awhile, beholding friend and foe
Clashing in conflict, till his soul commands
He, too, prest on whither the bugles blow,
Lifting his eyes sees over wasted lands
Life's dust and shadow drifting to and fro. ”

“ In the midst of the hurrying air?
Was it thine, lost bird,
Or the voice of an old despair
Chanting from years long dead,
Inexorable spirit flying
On tempest wings that passed and fled
Through the storm crying? ”

“ While dim mists earth's outlines blur.
And drip all night from lichen-greened roof-tiles.
In men's hearts the mad gods rise
And fill the streets with revelling,
With torchlight that glances on frozen pools. ”

“ Till sapphire windows palely burn
Amid the undefeated gray.
And yet — sometimes I seem to know
1 shall not 'scape his phantom bow;
More paramount than death or pain,
This ghost will follow where I go. ”

“ Walked up and softly spake to him:
"Art thou not he that late was dead?"
The drinker raised his cup on high,
And murmured: "Priest of Nazareth,
I am he thou didst raise from death —
Lo, thus I wait again to die!" ”

“ I see the red mouth tarnished, the face grey,
And smileless silent eyes of Magdalen.
The lights have laughed their last; without, the street
Darkling, awaiteth her whose feet have trod
The silly souls of men to golden dust. ”

“ ALWAYS the ships that move in mystery on the dim horizon,
Shadow-filled sails of dreams, sliding over the blue-grey ocean,
Far from the rock-edged shore where willow-green waves are rushing,
And white foam-people leap, to stand erect for the moment. ”

“ Merge and are lost, each in the other's flow.
Time is no lover; it is only he
That is the one unconquerable foe,
He is the sudden tempest none can know,
Winged with swift winds the none may hope to flee. ”

“ Go, then; and should inevitable fate
Lead us at last beyond the world of men
Where laurel and applause content no more,
Whither the soul takes silence for its mate,
There might we meet, and, smiling, once again
Clasp hands and part upon some windy shore. ”

“ And yet it could not rouse her from her sleeping.
With dawn the tide went seaward, bearing her
In its strong arms that clung so tenderly,
And laid her in a strange place far away
Where the tall seaweeds rise and never stir. ... ”