John Hall Wheelock
John Hall Wheelock Poems
Grasshopper, your fairy song
And my poem alike belong
To the dark and silent earth
From which all poetry has birth;
...
Life burns us up like fire,
And Song goes up in flame:
The radiant body smoulders
To the ashes whence it came.
...
I do not fear to lay my body down
In death, to share
The life of the dark earth and lose my own,
If God is there.
...
Sleep on -- I lie at heaven's high oriels,
Over the stars that murmur as they go
Lighting your lattice-window far below;
And every star some of the glory spells
...
In the pain, in the loneliness of love,
To the heart of my sweet I fled.
I knocked at the door of her living heart,
"Let in -- let in --" I said.
...
I dreamed I passed a doorway
Where, for a sign of death,
White ribbons one was binding
About a flowery wreath.
...
There is a panther caged within my breast,
But what his name, there is no breast shall know
Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so,
...
All my love for my sweet
I bared one day to her.
Carelessly she took it,
And like a conqueror
...
Look—on the topmost branches of the world
The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;
Over the huddled rows of stone and brick,
...
His gaze through the bars forever going by him
Has grown so dulled it takes in nothing else.
To him it seems a thousand bars go by him,
...
'A sun, a shadow of a magnitude,'
So Keats has written- yet what, truly, could
Come closer to pure godhead than a sun,
...
I have been dying a long time
In this cool valley-land, this green bowl ringed by hills-
The cup of a giant flower whose petals are
...
The lightning flashed, and lifted
The lids of heaven apart,
The fiery thunder rolled you
All night long through my heart.
...
The air is full of dawn and spring;
Outside the room I see
A swallow, like a shaft of light,
Shift sideways suddenly.
...
Your body’s motion is like music;
Her stride ecstatical and bright
Moves to the rhythm of dumb music,
The unheard music of delight.
...
Even as a hawk's in the large heaven's hollow
Are the great ways and gracious of your love,
No lesser heart or wearier wing may follow
...
Light, that out of the west looked back once more
Through lids of cloud, has closed a sleepy eye;
...
Give me your pitiful, soft hand, and lay
Your cheek against my shoulder, let your head
...
The night is measureless, no voice, no cry,
Pierces the dark in which the planet swings --
It is the shadow of her bulk that flings
...
Evening- and I, in the hour before sleep,
Lean out once more, and stare
Skyward, at you, bright star, deep, deep
...
John Hall Wheelock Biography
John Hall Wheelock, poet, scholar, and editor, was born 9 September 1886 in Rockaway, Long Island, NY son of William Efner Wheelock and Emily Charlotte Hall. His grandfather on his mothers side, Reverend John Hall, D.D. was the pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. His grandfather on his fathers side, William Almy Wheelock, was a highly successfuly businessman and civic leader. John Hall Wheelock grew up in New York, spending his childhood summers on the shore at East Hampton, Long Island, where he developed an affection for the sea. He graduated Harvard in 1908, class poet. As a student he was editor of the Harvard Monthly; and published his first work, "Verses by Two Undergraduates", anonymously with his friend Van Wyck Brooks during their freshman year. He spend two years in Germany, working on a post graduate degree at the University of Goettingen and the Univesity of Berlin. During this time he wrote a great deal of verse. Returning to America in 1910, he became associated with Charles Scribner and Sons, and by 1932 became a director of the corporation. In 1942 he became treasurer, and in 1947, upon the death of Maxwell Perkins, he became senior editor. In 1936, his published volume of Collected Works was awarded the Golden Rose by the New England Poetry Society, as the most distinguished contribution to American poetry of that year. For his work "Poems Old and New" he received the Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award in 1956, and the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award in 1957. In 1962 he won the Bollingen Prize; in 1965 the Signet Society Medal, Harvard University, for distinguished achievement in the arts. In 1972 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Poetry Society of America for notable achievement in poetry. John Hall Wheelock was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Poetry Society of America (Vice president, 1944-1946), National Institute of Arts and Letters (vice-president), and the Academy of American Poets (chancellor, 1947-71; honorary fellow, 1974-1978). He was an honorary consultant in American letters to the Library of Congress. During his career he worked with such distinguished authors as Thomas Wolfe and James Truslow Adams.)
The Best Poem Of John Hall Wheelock
Earth
Grasshopper, your fairy song
And my poem alike belong
To the dark and silent earth
From which all poetry has birth;
All we say and all we sing
Is but as the murmuring
Of that drowsy heart of hers
When from her deep dream she stirs:
If we sorrow, or rejoice,
You and I are but her voice.
Deftly does the dust express
In mind her hidden loveliness,
And from her cool silence stream
The cricket's cry and Dante's dream;
For the earth that breeds the trees
Breeds cities too, and symphonies.
Equally her beauty flows
Into a savior, or a rose --
Looks down in dream, and from above
Smiles at herself in Jesus' love.
Christ's love and Homer's art
Are but the workings of her heart;
Through Leonardo's hand she seeks
Herself, and through Beethoven speaks
In holy thunderings around
The awful message of the ground.
The serene and humble mold
Does in herself all selves enfold --
Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds,
Great dreams, and dauntless deeds,
Science that metes the firmament,
The high, inflexible intent
Of one for many sacrificed --
Plato's brain, the heart of Christ:
All love, all legend, and all lore
Are in the dust forevermore.
Even as the growing grass
Up from the soil religions pass,
And the field that bears the rye
Bears parables and prophecy.
Out of the earth the poem grows
Like the lily, or the rose;
And all man is, or yet may be,
Is but herself in agony
Toiling up the steep ascent
Toward the complete accomplishment
When all dust shall be, the whole
Universe, one conscious soul.
Yea, the quiet and cool sod
Bears in her breast the dream of God.
If you would know what earth is, scan
The intricate, proud heart of man,
Which is the earth articulate,
And learn how holy and how great,
How limitless and how profound
Is the nature of the ground --
How without terror or demur
We may entrust ourselves to her
When we are wearied out, and lay
Our faces in the common clay.
For she is pity, she is love,
All wisdom she, all thoughts that move
About her everlasting breast
Till she gathers them to rest:
All tenderness of all the ages,
Seraphic secrets of the sages,
Vision and hope of all the seers,
All prayer, all anguish, and all tears
Are but the dust, that from her dream
Awakes, and knows herself supreme --
Are but earth when she reveals
All that her secret heart conceals
Down in the dark and silent loam,
Which is ourselves, asleep, at home.
Yea, and this, my poem, too,
Is part of her as dust and dew,
Wherein herself she doth declare
Through my lips, and say her prayer.
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