Allen Tate

To Denis
Again the native hour lets down the
Uncombed and black, but gray the bobbing beard;
Ten years ago His eyes, fierce shuttlecocks,

Now twenty-four or maybe
Was the woman's age, and her white brow was sleek;
Lips parted in surprise, the flawless cheek;
The long brown hair coiled sullenly alive;

This message hastens lest we both go
Scattered, with no character, to death;
Death is untutored, with an ignorant
For precious identities of breath.

A
Think about it at will: there is
Which is the commentary; there's that other,
Which may be called the

Quem das finem, rex magne, dolorum?
Where we went in the boat was a long bayA slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone—Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:
Where we went in the black hull…

In the twilight of my audacityI saw you flee the world, the burnt
Of summer gave up their light:
Followed you with the uncommon
Of fear-supported and disbursed eyes.

To Robert Penn
You hold your eager
Too high in the air, you
As if the sleepy

Duchess:
Who am I?
Bosola:
Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but asalvatory of green mummy.

(Sappho)Never the tramp of foot or horse,
Nor lusty cries from ship at sea,
Shall I call loveliest on the dark earth-My heart moves lovingly.
I say that what one loves is best:

When the night's coming and the last light fallsA weak child among lost shadows on the floor,
It is your listening: pulse heeds the
Of fore and after, wind shivers the door.
What masterful delay commands the

When Alexander Pope strolled in the
Strict was the glint of pearl and ''old sedans.
Ladies leaned out more out of fear than
For Pope's tight back was rather a goat's than

Now all day long the man who is not
Hastens the dark with inattentive eyes,
The woman with white hand and erect
Stares at the covers, leans for the son's

There are wolves in the next room
With heads bent low, thrust out,
At nothing in the dark; between them and meA white door patched with light from the
Where it seems never (so still is the house)A man has walked from the front door…

For when they meet, the tensile
Like fine steel strains under the
Of messages that both hearts bear-Pure passion once, now purest hate;
Till the taut air like a cold

The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes,
The meadow creeps implacable and still;
A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies.
One two three the cows bulge on the hill.

I have looked at them long,
My eyes blur; sourceless
Keeps them forever
Before our ageing sight.

Give me this day a faith not personal,
As follows:
The American people fully
With assurance policies, righteous and harmed,

Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness;
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.

To E.
E.
CummingsI see the horses and the sad
Of my childhood in an agate

Last night I fled until I
To streets where leaking casements
Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame;
A nervous window bled.

Not yet the thirtieth year, the
Station where time reverses his light
To rim both ways, and makes of forward back;
Whose long coordinates are birth and

The day's at end and there's nowhere to go,
Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying;
Get up and once again politely
Invite the ladies toward the

Row after row with strict
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed

Jefferson Davis:
No more the white refulgent streets.
Never the dry hollows of the
Shall he in fine courtesy