Spring Thunder, and Other Poems |
Common terms and phrases
afternoon Autumn barn beak Beneath bird Breathing bright circle cold Comes cool coreopsis corn dark dead deep door dust ears eyes farmer feet trample fence fingers FIRE AT BED flakes descend fled floated forget goes gone grass green grey ground grove hand Hardhead hear heard heave here-and horses It's pleasant Javelins larkspur leaps ledge little town look mare MARRIAGE meadow morning naked nibble night once pipe pleasant POEMS poured PREMONITION quietly rafter rain REVERIE AFTER WAR road runs seasons shade shadows shed shingles shout silence sits sleep slept slow smile Softly soon sound spiders SPRING THUNDER stand STANFORD stone stood stove straight stubble suddenly summer Sunday Hill tell the mountain thin things THOMAS SELTZER trees turn voice wait walk wall warm watch weeds wheat wheel whence wind window wing winter wood wood-god's Yesterday
Popular passages
Page 11 - THUNDER Listen. The wind is still, And far away in the night — See! The uplands fill With a running light.
Page 14 - FORMER BARN LOT Once there was a fence here, And the grass came and tried — Leaning from the pasture — To get inside. But colt feet trampled it, Turning it brown...
Page 18 - Moves with superfluous might against the weeds. She ploughs across the creek and through the gap; Is halfway up the hillside; still no shout; No corn upon an aged, trembling hand. She hesitates, as if the barn were gone; Had never been just here; and gazes long At the half-opened door; then stumbles through. Some stranger has thrown nubbins in the box; Her salt is there; the timothy is down. She munches, while no words are in her nostrils; No feet in boots too big for them clump by. The weak old...
Page 20 - Like green fire. IMMORTAL The last thin acre of stalks that stood Was never the end of the wheat. Always something fled to the wood, As if the field had feet. In front of the sickle something rose — Mouse, or weasel, or hare; We struck and struck, but our worst blows Dangled in the air. Nothing could touch the little soul Of the grain. It ran to cover, And nobody knew in what warm hole It slept till the winter was over, And early seeds lay cold in the ground. Then — but nobody saw — It burrowed...
Page 20 - Grass nibbling inward Like green fire. IMMORTAL The last thin acre of stalks that stood Was never the end of the wheat. Always something fled to the wood, As if the field had feet.
Page 65 - ... Where motion that is yet not motion dies. Circles have lost their magic, and the voice Comes back upon itself .... The road is firm. It runs, and the dust is not too deep, and the end Never can heave in sight — though one is there. It runs in a straight silence, till a word Turns it; then a sentence, and evening falls At an expected inn, whose barest room Cannot be lonely if a hand is reached To touch another hand, the walls forgotten Laughter is morning, and the road resumes ; Adventurous,...
Page 25 - Above this solitary field. Here he circled after corn Before the oldest man was born. When the oldest man is dead He will be unsurfeited. See him crouch upon a limb With his banquet under him. Hear the echo of his caw Give the skirting forest law. Down he drops, and struts among The rows of supper, tassel-hung. Not a grain is left behind That his polished beak can find. He is full; he rises slow To watch the evening come and go. From the barren branch, his rest, All is open to the west ; And the...
Page 27 - RAIN- last night has left the field Bare as though a goblin kept it; Inch by inch the fellow kneeled And picked it clean; and his wife swept it. To-morrow morning when I pass A million particles will shine, As if the sky had been of glass, And had fallen, shattered fine. But on the third day will appear, Green between me and the sun, Behind each clod a mouse's ear — I shall go softly, lest they run.
Page 65 - NO wandering any more where the feet stumble Upon a sudden rise, or sink in deep Marsh grasses. No uncertain following on With nothing there to follow — a sure bird, A fence, a farmhouse. No adventuring now Where motion that is yet not motion dies. Circles have lost their magic, and the voice Comes back upon itself. . . . The road is firm. It runs, and the dust is not too...
Page 54 - Her throat already twitched to take it down; Already, under her bonnet, she was back Warming her oven carefully for the bread. Both here and there she sat. By its own thought Can a rock rest upon another hill? In certain veins the blood ran thinly now, And once tormented nerves were lying dead, Yet only seemed to die. They still could throb; Along their shrunken valleys still might race The current from a womb that once was full. And were that single daughter to return, Be seen across the pasture,...