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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Elizabeth J. Coatsworth

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Gate

Elizabeth J. Coatsworth

From “Vermilion Seals”

THE DUST is thick along the road;

The fields are scorching in the sun;

My wife has ever a bitter word

To greet me when the day is done.

The neighbors rest beside the gate

But half their words are high and shrill.

My son is over-young to help;

The fields are very hard to till.

But in the dusk I raise my eyes—

The poet’s words come back to me:

“In the moon there is a white jade gate

Shadowed cool by a cassia tree.”