Allen Tate Poems

Not power nor the casual hand of God
Shall keep us whole in our dissevering air,
It is a stink upon this pleasant sod
...

I myself saw furious with blood
Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae,
Hecuba and the hundred daughters, Priam
...

When the night's coming and the last light falls
A weak child among lost shadows on the floor,
It is your listening: pulse heeds the strain
...

When you are come by ways emptied of light
You'll say goodby, in that indifferent gloom,
To the quick draughts of old, yet with polite
...

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky
And I must think a little of the past:
When I was ten I told a stinking lie
...

Remember now, my Love, what piteous thing
We saw on a summer's gracious day:
By the roadside a hideous carrion, quivering
On a clean bed of pebbly clay,
...

Seed in your heart, warm dust transmuted
Gold, blooms in flakes of radiance
Arched in your face whereon my days,
...

I see him old, trapped in a burly house
Cold in the angry spitting of a rain
...

LIBERAL
In that place, shepherd, all the men are dead.

POET
Yes, look at the water grim and black
...

In the twilight of my audacity
I saw you flee the world, the burnt highways
Of summer gave up their light: I
Followed you with the uncommon span
...