I. I visited your house today In beautiful Franconia, And wore my Californian boots, Stitched with a gothic cross In morning indigo, Poor choice because the ice Knowing your preferred eschaton Stays glazed upon the grass Though all the stag herds of the sun Are visible as vapours from a creek That has begun to thaw, Eating bright apples from your palm. One feels you here, your voice Like tree-sap in the green walls of a house, And me, a young American, I wonder if our country has a Muse, And if your house was also hers. Nevertheless I could not hear your voice Upon the other coast, So the white-picket fence Must have a strong demarking post. II. Like huge white angels broken from the earth Stand round your house the mountains in a ring, And there are rocking chairs upon your porch, Whose rocking taught your iambs into sleep. It is a good place here to be, and far Enough from the great dens to breed That silence which can thus receive the seed Pressed in the azure soil of the mind Which made your tongue to lick the walls Of silver bells which hang on every shelf, And brought the sapling into brilliance, Dry brilliance, and shook the apples down. III. It’s likely I’ll go back, But send your blessing on my back When I return. Your austere psalm Could use a touch of wildness. I thank your household gods, The apple-spirit and the girl birch-wood, For this our visit here. And let me say I also make a prayer On his behalf, that, after you were sown, Was of my creed the first To crave in the God-deep An American psalm.
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I have had his Psalter for years! And my younger sister is an alumna of Dartmouth. I went there once, for her graduation.
Inspiring, thank you.