A Little
Anthology
"Dover Beach'"
~A Note to that Poem
The wave withdrawing
Withers with seaward rustle of flimsy water
Sucking the sand down: dragging at empty shells:
The roil after it settling: too smooth: smothered-
After forty a man's a fool to wait in the
Sea's face for the full force and the roaring of
Surf to come over him: droves of careening water.
After forty the tug's out and the salt and the
Sea follow it: less sound and violence:
Nevertheless the ebb has its own beauty-
Shells sand and all and the whispering 'rustle.
There's earth in it then and the bubbles of foam gone.
Moreover-and this too has its lovely uses--
It's the outward wave that spills the inward forward
Tripping the proud piled mute virginal
Mountain of water in wallowing welter of light and
Sound enough-thunder
for miles back: it's a fine and a
Wild smother to vanish in: pulling down-
Tripping with outward ebb the urgent inward.
Speaking alone for myself it's the steep hill and the
Toppling lift of the young men I am toward now-
Waiting for that as the wave for the next wave.
Let them go over us all I say with the thunder of
What's to be next in the world. It's we will be under it!
ARCHIBALD MacLEISH
N ever, Never, Never
But it never could be,
how could it ever happen if it never did before and it's not
so now,
But suppose that the face behind those steel prison bars,
why do you dream about a face lying cold in the trenches
streaked with rain and dirt and blood,
is it the very same face seen so often in the mirror,
just as though it could be true-
But what if it is, what if it is, what if it is, what if the thing
that cannot happen really happens just the same,
suppose the fever goes a hundred, then a hundred and one,
what if Holy Savings Trust goes from 98 to 88 to 78 to
68, then drops down to 28 and 8 and out of sight,
and the fever shoots a hundred two, a hundred three, a
hundred four, then a hundred five and out,
But now there's only the wind and the sky and sunlight and
the clouds,
with ordinary people walking and talking as they always
have before along the ordinary street
doing everyday things with everyday faces and everyday
clothes in the ordinary way,
just as they always will-
Then why does it feel like a bomb, why does it feel like a
target,
like standing on the gallows with the trap about to drop,
why does it feel like a thunderbolt
the second before it
strikes, why does it feel like a tightrope walk high over
hell,
Because it is not, never will, could not come true
that the whole wide, bright, green, warm, calm world goes
CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH
CRASH.
KENNETH FEARING
More of a Corpse
than a Woman
Give them my regards when you go to the school reunion
i
and at the marriage-supper,
say that I'm thinlcing about them.
They'll
remembe,r my name
i
I went to the movies with
that one,
feeling the weight of their death where she sat at my elbow;
she never said a word
but all of them were heard.
All of them alike, expensive girls, the leaden friends:
one used to play the piano, one of them once wrote a sonnet,
one even seemed awakened enough to photograph wheat-
fields-
the dull girls with the educated minds and technical pas-
sIOns-
pure love was their employment,
they tried it for enjoyment.
Meet them at the boal: they've brought the souvenirs of
boredom,
a seashell from the faltering monarchy;
the nose of a marble saint; and from the battlefield,
an empty shell divulged from a flower-bed.
The lady's wealthy breath
perfumes the air with death.
The leaden lady faces the fine, voluptuous woman,
faces a rising world bringing its gifts in its hands.
Kisses her casual dreams upon the lips she kisses,
risen, she moves away; takes others
i
moves away.
inadequate to love,
supposes she's enough.
MARCH,
1936
