Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Your Hands

Florence Ripley Mastin

HANDS, your hands, quite calm now

At the day’s end,

You are not delicately molded, not exquisite,

Not gentle always….

You are scarred,

With broken lines—

Sultry lines of passion.

There are grotesques in you,

Like forests after fire.

You hold valleys of renunciation,

And crags shaken by the storm,

That only faiths like wild goats know.

Yet now rises, within that dark repose,

Beauty, as she comes hooded at twilight….

Ah, do not touch me, yet …