Emblems

I

Maryland, Virginia, Caroline

Pent images in sleep

Clay valleys rocky hills old fields of pine

Unspeakable and deep

Out of that source of time my farthest blood

Runs strangely to this day

Unkempt the fathers waste in solitude

Under the hills of clay

Far from their woe fled to its thither side

To a river in Tennessee

In an alien house I will stay

Yet find their breath to be

All that my stars betide-

There some time to abide

Took wife and child with me,

II

When it is all over and the blood

Runs out, do not bury this man

By the far river (where never stood

His fathers) flowing to the West,

But take him East where life began.

my brothers, there is rest

In the depths of an eastward river

That I can understand; only

Do not think the truth we hold

I hold the slighter for this lonely

Reservation of the heart:

Men cannot live forever

But they must die forever

So take this body at sunset

To the great stream whose pulses start

In the blue hills, and let

These ashes drift from the Long Bridge

Where only a late gull breaks

That deep and populous grave.

III

By the great river the forefathers to beguile

Them, being inconceivably young, carved out

Deep hollows of memory on a river isle

Now lost-their murmur the ghost of a shout

In the hollows where the forefathers

Without beards, their faces bright and long,

Lay down at sunset by the cool river

In the tall willows amid birdsong;

And the long sleep by the cool river

They've slept full and long, till now the air

Waits twilit for their echo; the burning shiver

Of August strikes like a hawk the crouching hare.