Emblems

Maryland,

Virginia,

Pent images in

Clay valleys rocky hills old fields of

Unspeakable and

Out of that source of time my farthest

Runs strangely to this

Unkempt the fathers waste in

Under the hills of

Far from their woe fled to its thither

To a river in

In an alien house I will

Yet find their breath to

All that my stars betide-There some time to

Took wife and child with me,

When it is all over and the

Runs out, do not bury this

By the far river (where never

His fathers) flowing to the West,

But take him East where life brothers, there is

In the depths of an eastward

That I can understand;

Do not think the truth we holdI hold the slighter for this

Reservation of the heart:

Men cannot live

But they must die

So take this body at

To the great stream whose pulses

In the blue hills, and

These ashes drift from the Long

Where only a late gull

That deep and populous grave.

By the great river the forefathers to

Them, being inconceivably young, carved

Deep hollows of memory on a river

Now lost-their murmur the ghost of a

In the hollows where the

Without beards, their faces bright and long,

Lay down at sunset by the cool

In the tall willows amid birdsong;

And the long sleep by the cool

They've slept full and long, till now the

Waits twilit for their echo; the burning

Of August strikes like a hawk the crouching hare.