Lines For A Prologue
Archibald MacLeish 1892 (Glencoe) – 1982 (Boston)
These alternate nights and days, these seasons
Somehow fail to convince me. It seems
I have the sense of infinity!
(In your dreams, O crew of Columbus,
O listeners over the sea
For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—)
Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden.
I thought, What time is it? I thought,
Time—Is it Time still?—Now is it Time?
(Tell me your dreams, O sailors:
Tell me, in sleep did you climb
The tall masts, and before you—)
At night the stillness of old trees
Is a leaning over and the inertness
Of hills is a kind of waiting.
(In sleep, in a dream, did you see
The world’s end? Did the water
Break—and no shore—Did you see?)
Strange faces come through the streets to me
Like messengers: and I have been warned
By the moving slowly of hands at a window.
Oh, I have the sense of infinity—
But the world, sailors, is round.
They say there is no end to it.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 104 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXA BAC XXD XDX XBC AXA AXX AXX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 898 |
Words | 172 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
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"Lines For A Prologue" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/3759/lines-for-a-prologue>.
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