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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
HYMN FOR A DARK AGE, by LYDIA LITTELL First Line: What the bird on the bough can tell you I can tell you Last Line: And the eternally renewed design. | |||
What the bird on the bough can tell you I can tell you -- The incomparable bird singing of love and God; And the dream of the lizard motionless in the summer sun is my dream; And the slow earthworm underneath the sod, I know its trail: burrowing through the mould, opening crack after tiny crack, Letting the imperative germ pierce the deep black, Pushing the soil upward that the recurrent life may be; And when the light leaps into blade and bud, The miracle occurs in me. My blood-beat is in the incessant and terrific thunder over the ocean floor; The exalted hymn of the mountain is my own; Mine no less is the cry of the stalking beast, and the silent Cry of the bleaching bone. The rapids foaming on the rock assert my word, And the interminable, plunging waterfall; I am the bead of moisture on the glass that prisms all the seven colors; I am the challenging and the dividing wall. My Yea shouts through the spaces with Orion and the dawn; The secret music of all life is mine: The clashing rhythms, potent silences, And the eternally renewed design. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NOTHING BUT LEAVES by LUCY EVELINA AKERMAN LITANY by ROBERT GRANT (1785-1838) PROPERZIA ROSSI by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS LETTER TO MY SISTER by ANNE SPENCER BIRTH by ANNIE RAYMOND STILLMAN SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD by WALT WHITMAN LINES FOR THE HOUR by HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG |
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