QUICKENING

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:

Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;

You see them printed here, and mark their chime,

And turn to your more durable affairs.

Yet on such petty tools the poet dares

To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,

And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares

To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,

This measured emptiness engulfs us all,

And yet he points his paper javelin

And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,

And feels, between delight and trouble torn,

The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.