Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TRAIN-MATES, by WITTER BYNNER Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Outside hove shasta, snowy height on height Last Line: As discus-thrower and as laureate? Alternate Author Name(s): Morgan, Emanuel Subject(s): Athletes; Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height, A glory; but a negligible sight, For you had often seen a mountain-peak But not my paper. So we came to speak. A smoke, a smile, -- a good way to commence The comfortable exchange of difference! -- You a young engineer, five feet eleven, Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven, Liking a road-bed newly built and clean, Your fingers hot to cut away the green Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack, -- And I a poet, wistful of my betters, Reading George Meredith's high-hearted Letters, Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each Absorbing to himself -- as I to me And you to you -- a glad identity! After a while when the others went away, A curious kinship made us want to stay, Which I could tell you now; but at the time You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme, Until we found that we were college men And smoked more easily and smiled again; And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still: "I know your fine Greek Theatre on the hill At Berkeley!" With your happy Grecian head Upraised, "I never saw the place," you said. "Once I was free of class, I always went Out to the field." Young engineer, You meant as fair a tribute to the better part As ever I did. Beauty of the heart Is evident in temples. But it breathes Alive where athletes quicken airy wreaths, Which are the lovelier because they die. You are a poet quite as much as I, Though differences appear in what we do, And I an athlete quite as much as you. Because you half-surmised my quarter-mile And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile. Who knows but we shall look again and find The circus-man and drummer, not behind But leading in our visible estate, As discus-thrower and as laureate? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB A BUFFALO DANCE AT SANTO DOMINGO by WITTER BYNNER |
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