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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  E. Preston Dargan

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Heartily Know

E. Preston Dargan

HYPATIA the heathen, pearl among women, sings:

“Zeus, Eros or Christ is only the vision that brings

Balm for your bruises, shapens and clips your wings.”

Sappho of Firedom, amorous-perfect, speaks:

“I have been girdled by Eros for days and for weeks—

Alas!… Blow on, thou dawn-wind that wasteth my cheeks.”

There was also a modern, a mind of ten thousand, who wrote:

“It is forbidden to name Jehovah. I vote

For a God of the atom, the air, the unknowable.—Quote!”

And you who cling to the peerless puzzle, say—

Will the God of to-morrow serve, or of yesterday?

Something divine must descend, for such is the call of the clay?

The God is in you. (Will your idols never be gone?)

Your firm and productive self is immortal as Avalon ..

Heaven and hell are old age; get off your knees and go on.