Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/190

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So they will pass their days,
Fostering a child or two, giving names
Of half-remembered music, clamor, sound;
Over hunched shoulders peering round
For cold that creeping comes;
Over and over saying tropic words,
And calling babies after jungle birds.

They will be cheered with each new child,
And the wierd
Pall of the sky and the wild
Tangle of hooped moons piled
Like rubbish in the pallid west
Won't trouble them so much
With what they feared,
They'll touch
Cautiously their children and their lovers, clutch
Anything alive.

Not to give in
Men will go on,
Cold to the chin,
Light-stepping for fear
Feeling the thin
Ice of the air crack under the weight
Of feather-poised earth, and the near
Nuzzle of snow and the wind's spear.

Smoke from fire
And ice's smoke,
Lunge together,
Fight and choke,
Plunge and throttle and fight, and all
Blue smoke vanishes. Ashes fall.

Some will call the skimming planets, cranes
Going south for winter, nothing more,
And some will sow the icy fields with grains,
Search barren pools,
Harvest sea-weed, plant a pebble, or
Plough snow with patient tools.

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