Pastoral

William Carlos Williams 1883 (Rutherford) – 1963 (Rutherford)



The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
These things
astonish me beyond words.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

24 sec read
434

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJAKBBLMHNOPHQRFS
Closest metre Iambic dimeter
Characters 469
Words 81
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 25

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was a Latino-American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. more…

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