dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Little Book of Modern Verse  »  Live Blindly

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

Trumbull Stickney

Live Blindly

LIVE blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs’ aërial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers.