Search

Search results

Rolfe Humphries, time, in English Clear filters

CheerfulRolfe Humphries

Test Paper

What do we praise?—Sunsets, and open fires, America, and mother love, I guess; The merry laughter of a little child, And poems that touch the heart with tenderness. What do we really praise?—Oh, Life and Time, (With capitals), books that Fadiman commends, The chromium bars, the streamlined cars and trains, The music played for music's newest friends. What do we praise beyond all this?—High art, God's majesty and sacraments and grace, The universal music of the spheres, The mysteries of interstellar space. Come down to earth. What is it you and I, My love, deep in our heart of hearts, adore, Cherish, and tend? — Each other. Not so fast. Maybe, a little; but ourselves much more.
ContemplativeRolfe Humphries

The Statue

Short, husky, black and brown with dust and sweat The quarry men, whose bar and sledge have pried The marble loose, stand back to watch it drawn Down the rough skidroad from the mountainside, Out of its first exposure, heading toward A new erosion, where a mind, an eye, And something called imagination, wait To wear it down, before the hands dare try To grasp and lift the chisel and the maul, One man's complete employment now, — observe How stone is dressed in nakedness, how steel With sharp straight edge brings out the bevelled curve. One man does this, who stops at times, and frowns, Or hums himself a little tune that goes, When all goes well, The more the marble wastes,
SadRolfe Humphries

The Jaded

They have come from far; they have come from very far, And they are wearier than they are wise. Their manliness is spent; their cheekbones are Hollow below their old beleaguered eyes Which seek, once more, the cities of the plain With dubious nostalgia, and in vain. Listening, they have seen confusion darken, And, watching, they have heard disaster sound; They do not, any longer, care to hearken To oracles and prophets, having found Belief a stimulus which made them strong For a few moments, never very long. And now their will is tenuous as smoke Or veils of mist from vales of mist arising; Their courage, thin as any beggar's cloak, Shrinks from advice, and shudders at advising;
ContemplativeRolfe Humphries

Fin de Siècle

All that I wander through, so bright, so modern, So quick with novelty, so very wise, So dernier cri, so ne plus ultra, this, All this, all this, I come to realize, All of a sudden, is not mine at all, Is not my Now, but some one else's Then. There will be other women, other men, Appropriating this, still bright, but small, Garish and glazed, of colored post-card size, So little that it goes from hand to hand For the delight of those who know and praise Our customs, our décor and these our days: "How irresistible! How charming!" so Runs their gay comment on their long ago. Secure, and, what is even better, chic, These lovers of the chromium antique
ContemplativeRolfe Humphries

The Islands

The stars, in dissolution burning, Burn out, as we do, late or soon, Islands of fire, the fixed, the turning, Whose morning and whose afternoon Are half a trillion years, a span As brief, or long, as his for man. My son, when dark comes down, comes down To the south lawn to study these: Knowing from books the proper noun For what, to me, are mysteries, He finds the one he looks for, there, Above the apple-tree, Altair. Altair in August. April gone Four months — or is it only hours? — Since, resting on the same south lawn, I lay and looked at yellow flowers
ContemplativeRolfe Humphries

Little Fugue

Wind running over the reeds like water Reeds like sea-weed under the wind Bending and rising, under and over — So, in the wind of Time, the mind Seems to bow and recover Under the run of the river. Like running water over the reeds Wind is pouring its weight of air: The way of Time, like a stream, With rush and rest proceeds, A rush, and a rest, and a stir, And moods are water-weeds. The bend and the rise, the rest and the rush, The rush and the reed, and the wind running over, The weigh and the wait of Time Under the run of the water

Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem

Or try: