“O who can ever gaze his fill,”
Farmer and fisherman say,
“On native shore and local hill,
Grudge aching limb or callus on th
Father, grandfather stood upon thi

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Perfection, of a kind, was what he
And the poetry he invented was eas
He knew human folly like the back
And was greatly interested in armi
When he laughed, respectable senat

We made all possible preparations,
Drew up a list of firms,
Constantly revised our calculation
And allotted the farms,
Issued all the orders expedient

He was found by the Bureau of Sta
One against whom there was no offi
And all the reports on his conduct
That, in the modern sense of an ol
saint,

Unbiased at least he was when he a
Having never set eyes on the land
Between two peoples fanatically at
With their different diets and inc
“Time,” they had briefed him in L

Time will say nothing but I told
Time only knows the price we have
If I could tell you I would let y
If we should weep when clowns put
If we should stumble when musician

Encased in talent like a uniform,
The rank of every poet is well kno
They can amaze us like a thunderst
Or die so young, or live for years
They can dash forward like hussars

Here war is simple like a monument
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops
A boy brings milk in bowls. There
For living men in terror of their

Time can say nothing but I told y
Time only knows the price we have
If I could tell you, I would let
If we should weep when clowns put
If we should stumble when musician

Each lover has some theory of his
About the difference between the a
Of being with his love, and being
Why what, when dreaming, is dear f
That really stirs the senses, when

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.

He disappeared in the dead of wint
The brooks were frozen, the airpor
And snow disfigured the public sta
The mercury sank in the mouth of t
What instruments we have agree

He looked in all His wisdom from
Down on that humble boy who kept t
And sent a dove; the dove returned
Youth liked the music, but soon fe
But He had planned such future fo

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that c
And all the beasts that need not r
It is today in which we live.
So many try to say Not Now,

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:

We, too, had known golden hours
When body and soul were in tune,
Had danced with our true loves
By the light of a full moon,
And sat with the wise and good

Stop all the clocks, cut off the t
Prevent the dog from barking with
Silence the pianos and with muffle
Bring out the coffin, let the mour
Let aeroplanes circle moaning over

And the age ended, and the last de
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; th
The sudden shadow of the giant’s e
Would fall no more at dusk across
They slept in peace: in marshes he

My dear one is mine as mirrors are
As the poor and sad are real to th
And the high green hill sits alway
Up jumped the Black Man behind th
Turned a somersault and ran away w

Certainly our city with its byres
The river’s edge, its cathedral, i
Here is the cosmopolitan cooking
And the light alloys and the glass
Built by the conscience-stricken,

Underneath the leaves of life,
Green on the prodigious tree,
In a trance of grief
Stand the fallen man and wife:
Far away the single stag