9. Trumbull Stickney
From The Soul of Time, 1904
Time’s a circumference
Whereof the segment of our station seems
A long straight line from nothing into naught.
Therefore we say “progress,” “infinity” —
Dull words whose object
Hangs in the air of error and delights
Our boyish minds a hunt for butterflies.
For aspiration studies not the sky
But looks for stars
From I Used to Think, 1905
- I used to think
- The mind essential in the body, even
- As stood the body essential in the mind:
- Two inseparable things, by nature equal
- And similar, and in creation’s song
- Halving the total scale: it is not so.
- Unlike and cross like driftwood sticks they come
- Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine,
- A slab of rosewood: mangled each on each
- With knocks and friction, or in deadly pain
- Sheathing each other’s splinters: till at last
- Without all stuff or shape they’re jetted up
- Where in the bluish moisture rot whate’er
- Was vomited in horror from the sea.