Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Nevertheless
NEVERTHELESS
Inasmuch as I love you
And shall know no peace more unless I am near you,
Though you are a flame of will
Proud and variable as you are beautiful and dear—
Nevertheless I will go your way,
Since you will not go mine.
And shall know no peace more unless I am near you,
Though you are a flame of will
Proud and variable as you are beautiful and dear—
Nevertheless I will go your way,
Since you will not go mine.
Therefore, although the cool roads of my village
Are more pleasant to me than the pavements of your city;
Although its dim streets are more kindly than your glaring arcs;
Though the unhurried voices of my townspeople
Are more friendly music in my ears than the screamings
And glib chatter of your city-dwellers:
Nevertheless I will go down with you into the city
And bruise my heart upon its bricks;
Become brother to its shrieking "elevated"
And learn to hurry away my days in this brief world
Among the grimy roofs that soil the clean young sunshine;
Thinking only at long whiles, in summer dusks,
Of hushed paths where hurrying feet have never trodden,
Of cool lanes white in the splendor of the rising moon.
Clifford Franklin Gessler
Poetry, A Magazine of Verse
Are more pleasant to me than the pavements of your city;
Although its dim streets are more kindly than your glaring arcs;
Though the unhurried voices of my townspeople
Are more friendly music in my ears than the screamings
And glib chatter of your city-dwellers:
Nevertheless I will go down with you into the city
And bruise my heart upon its bricks;
Become brother to its shrieking "elevated"
And learn to hurry away my days in this brief world
Among the grimy roofs that soil the clean young sunshine;
Thinking only at long whiles, in summer dusks,
Of hushed paths where hurrying feet have never trodden,
Of cool lanes white in the splendor of the rising moon.
Clifford Franklin Gessler
Poetry, A Magazine of Verse