I Know It Will Be Quiet When You Come

Joseph Auslander 1897 (Philadelphia) – 1965 (Coral Gables)



I know it will be quiet when you come:
No wind; the water breathing steadily;
A light like ghost of silver on the sea;
And the surf dreamily fingering his drum.
Twilight will drift in large and leave me numb
With nearness to the last tranquility;
And then the slow and languorous tyranny
Of orange moon, pale night, and cricket hum.

And suddenly there will be twist of tide,
A rustling as of thin silk on the sand,
The tremor of a presence at my side,
The tremble of a hand upon my hand:
And pulses sharp with pain, and fires fanned,
And words that stumble into stars and hide.
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Submitted by halel on July 13, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
16

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABBA CDCDDC
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 564
Words 110
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

Joseph Auslander

Joseph Auslander was an American poet, anthologist, translator of poems, and novelist. Auslander was appointed the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1937 and 1941. more…

All Joseph Auslander poems | Joseph Auslander Books

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