Elinor Morton Wylie Poems

The old moon is tarnished
With smoke of the flood,
The dead leaves are varnished
With colour like blood.
...

Say not of beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.
...

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am by nature none of these.
...

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet snd slow,
At a tranquil pace,
...

A white well
In a black cave;
A bright shell
In a dark wave.
...

1

When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
...

When foxes eat the last gold grape,
And the last white antelope is killed,
I shall stop fighting and escape
Into a little house I'll build.
...

My locks are shorn for sorrow
Of love which may not be;
Tomorrow and tomorrow
Are plotting cruelty.
...

For this you've striven
Daring, to fail:
Your sky is riven
Like a tearing veil.
...

Beauty has a tarnished dress,
And a patchwork cloak of cloth
Dipped deep in mournfulness,
Striped like a moth.
...