Before Dawn

Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)



Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate,
By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws
Are as decrees immutable; O pause
Your even forward march! Not yet too late
Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait
Inactive as a ship when no wind draws
To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores
Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate
Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years
Have lengthened into decades; now distressed
He knows no rule by which to move or stay,
And teased with restlessness and desperate fears
He dares not watch in silence thy wise way
Bringing about results none could have guessed.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 11, 2023

32 sec read
112

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABCADEFDFE
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 611
Words 106
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

Amy Lowell

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. more…

All Amy Lowell poems | Amy Lowell Books

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    Do not go gentle into that good _______. Rage, rage against the dying of the light
    A end
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