I pray to be the tool which to your hand
Long use has shaped and moulded till it be
Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,
You take it for its service. I demand
To be forgotten in the woven strand
Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry
Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie
A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.
I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,
The railing to the stairway of the clouds,
To guard your steps securely up, where streams
A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds
Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby
You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.
***
More poems by Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874 – 1925) was an American poetess that belonged to the informal imagist, an early modernist movement, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.