Lines For A Prologue

These alternate nights and days, these seasons

Somehow fail to convince me. It seems

I have the sense of infinity!

(In your dreams, O crew of Columbus,

O listeners over the sea

For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—)

Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden.

I thought, What time is it? I thought,

Time—Is it Time still?—Now is it Time?

(Tell me your dreams, O sailors:

Tell me, in sleep did you climb

The tall masts, and before you—)

At night the stillness of old trees

Is a leaning over and the inertness

Of hills is a kind of waiting.

(In sleep, in a dream, did you see

The world’s end? Did the water

Break—and no shore—Did you see?)

Strange faces come through the streets to me

Like messengers: and I have been warned

By the moving slowly of hands at a window.

Oh, I have the sense of infinity—

But the world, sailors, is round.

They say there is no end to it.