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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Lola Ridge

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

After Storm

Lola Ridge

WAS there a wind?

Tap …. tap …

Night pads upon the snow

With moccasined feet,

And it is still …. so still …

An eagle’s feather

Might fall like a stone.

Could there have been a storm,

Mad-tossing golden mane

on the neck of the wind—

Tearing up the sky,

loose-flapping like a tent

about the ice-capped stars?

Cool, sheer and motionless,

The frosted pines

Are jewelled with a million flaming points,

That fling their beauty up in long white sheaves

Till they catch hands with stars.

Could there have been a wind

That haled them by the hair,

And blinding

Blue-forked

Flowers of the lightning

In their leaves?

Tap …. tap …

Slow-ticking centuries …

Soft as bare feet upon the snow …

Faint …. lulling as heard rain

upon heaped leaves …

So silence builds her wall

about a dream impaled.