Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/221

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BRONZE TRUMPETS AND SEA WATER On Turning Latin Verse Into English Verse
Alembics turn to stranger things
Strange things: but never while we live
Shall magic turn this bronze that sings
To singing water in a sieve.

The trumpeteers of Caesar's guard
Salute his rigorous bastions
With ordered bruit: the bronze is hard
Though there is silver in the bronze.

Our mutable tongue is like the sea,
Curled wave, and shattering thunder-fit:
Dangle in strings of sand shall be
Who smooths the ripples out of it!

The New RepublicElinor Wylie


THE TORTOISE IN ETERNITY
Within my house of patterned horn
I sleep in such a bed
As men may keep before they're born
And after they are dead.

Sticks and stones may break their bones,
And words may make them bleed:
There is not one of them who own
An armour to his need.

Tougher than hide or lozenged bark
Snow-storm and thunder proof,
And quick with sun and thick with dark
Is this my darling roof.

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