Jump to content

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed/Patience

From Wikisource
Listen to this text, read by Ken Masters (0.86MB, help | file info or download)
1904093Sword Blades and Poppy Seed — PatienceAmy Lowell

Be patient with you?
 When the stooping sky
Leans down upon the hills
And tenderly, as one who soothing stills
 An anguish, gathers earth to lie
Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men
 Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
 When the snow-girt earth
Cracks to let through a spurt
Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt
 A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth
To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men
 Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
 When pain's iron bars
Their rivets tighten, stern
To bend and break their victims; as they turn,
 Hopeless, there stand the purple jars
Of night to spill oblivion. Do these men
 Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
 You! My sun and moon!
My basketful of flowers!
My money-bag of shining dreams! My hours,
 Windless and still, of afternoon!
You are my world and I your citizen.
 What meaning can have patience then?

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1925, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 98 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse