Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That’s why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.
William Faulkner
Gray The Day
Gray the day, all the year is cold,
Across the empty land the swallows’ cry
Marks the southflown spring. Naught is bowled
Save winter, in the sky.
O sorry earth, when this bleak bitter sleep
Stirs and turns and time once more is green,
In empty path and lane and grass will creep
With none to tread it clean.
April and May and June, and all the dearth
Of heart to green it for, to hurt and wake;
What good is budding, gray November earth?
No need to break your sleep for greening’s sake.
The hushed plaint of wind in stricken trees
Shivers the grass in path and lane
And Grief and Time are tideless golden seas—
Hush, hush! He’s home again.
To A Co-Ed
The dawn herself could not more beauty wear
Than you ‘mid other women crowned in grace,
Nor have the sages known a fairer face
Than yours, gold-shadowed by your bright sweet hair.
Than you does Venus seem less heavenly fair;
The twilit hidden stillness of your eyes,
And throat, a singing bridge of still replies,
A slender bridge, yet all dreams hover there.
I could have turned unmoved from Helen’s brow,
Who found no beauty in their Beatrice;
Their Thais seemed less lovely then as now,
Though some had bartered Athens for her kiss.
For down Time’s arras, faint and fair and far,
Your face still beckons like a lonely star.
Fourteen Lines 