Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885–1977). Modern American Poetry. 1919.

John G. Neihardt1881–1973

Let Me Live Out My Years

LET me live out my years in heat of blood!

Let me die drunken with the dreamer’s wine!

Let me not see this soul-house built of mud

Go toppling to the dusk—a vacant shrine.

Let me go quickly, like a candle light

Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow.

Give me high noon—and let it then be night!

Thus would I go.

And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,

My song may trumpet down the gray Perhaps.

Let me be as a tune-swept fiddlestring

That feels the Master Melody—and snaps!