Marvel - by Liberty Hyde

“Marvel”
Liberty Hyde Bailey

(From WIND AND WEATHER: POEMS
Doulos Christou Press, 2008 edition)

Ah, the wonders I have seen
At dawn and sunset and between!

The ocean beach on wild midnights
Deep steaming swamps and northern bights
The cirrhus clouds in high moonlights
The magic calm of tropic seas
The nameless sails at distant quays
The long long walks on lonely strands
Dead vacantness of desert lands
The constellations in new skies
The rounding landscape’s million dyes

The fling of frost on country side
The burning stacks on prairies wide
Surpassing peace of autumn leaves
Ten thousand stooks of harvest sheaves
The ruddy camp-fire’s holy zest
Howbe the catbird builds its nest
And how the palm-tree rears its crest
The sanctity of falling snow
The lull before the thunder-blow
The sacred naves of forests old
Strange rivers bearing freights untold
Serenity of mountain peaks
The youthful worlds in rolling creeks
The glacier gleams on headlands far
Deep chambered caves and calcic spar
The iceberg’s crystal citadels
And all the people in the towns
In all the sleeping virgin towns
And all the partings and farewells,—
Oh the spaces and the sweep
Of the zenith and the deep!

Ah, the marvels I have seen
At gloam and sunrise and between!

ht: @ERbks 

quotable quotes

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace -- not in the infantile ... sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. - James Baldwin, from his book The Fire Next Time