Archibald MacLeish Quote

It is colder now,There are many stars,We are driftingNorth by the Great Bear,The leaves are falling,The water is stone in the scooped rocks,To southwardRed sun grey air:The crows areSlow on their crooked wings,The jays have left us:Long since we passed the flares of Orion.Each man believes in his heart he will die.Many have written last thoughts and last letters.None know if our deaths are now or forever:None know if this wandering earth will be found.We lie down and the snow covers our garments.I pray you,You (if any open this writing)Make in your mouths the words that were our names.I will tell you all we have learned,I will tell you everything:The earth is round,There are springs under the orchards,The loam cuts with a blunt knife,Beware ofElms in thunder,The lights in the sky are stars—We think they do not see,We think alsoThe trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:The birds too are ignorant.Do not listen.Do not stand at dark in the open windows.We before you have heard this:They are voices:They are not words at all but the wind rising.Also none among us has seen God.(...We have thought oftenThe flaws of sun in the late and driving weatherPointed to one tree but it was not so.)As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:The wind changes at night and the dreams come.It is very cold,There are strange stars near Arcturus,Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Archibald MacLeish

It is colder now,There are many stars,We are driftingNorth by the Great Bear,The leaves are falling,The water is stone in the scooped rocks,To southwardRed sun grey air:The crows areSlow on their crooked wings,The jays have left us:Long since we passed the flares of Orion.Each man believes in his heart he will die.Many have written last thoughts and last letters.None know if our deaths are now or forever:None know if this wandering earth will be found.We lie down and the snow covers our garments.I pray you,You (if any open this writing)Make in your mouths the words that were our names.I will tell you all we have learned,I will tell you everything:The earth is round,There are springs under the orchards,The loam cuts with a blunt knife,Beware ofElms in thunder,The lights in the sky are stars—We think they do not see,We think alsoThe trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:The birds too are ignorant.Do not listen.Do not stand at dark in the open windows.We before you have heard this:They are voices:They are not words at all but the wind rising.Also none among us has seen God.(...We have thought oftenThe flaws of sun in the late and driving weatherPointed to one tree but it was not so.)As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:The wind changes at night and the dreams come.It is very cold,There are strange stars near Arcturus,Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Tags: poetry

Related Quotes

About Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.