English Poetry. Stephen Vincent Benet. Nos Immortales. Стивен Винсент Бене.

Stephen Vincent Benet (Стивен Винсент Бене)

Nos Immortales

Perhaps we go with wind and cloud and sun, 
Into the free companionship of air; 
Perhaps with sunsets when the day is done, 
All’s one to me -- I do not greatly care; 
So long as there are brown hills -- and a tree 
Like a mad prophet in a land of dearth -- 
And I can lie and hear eternally 
The vast monotonous breathing of the earth. 

I have known hours, slow and golden-glowing, 
Lovely with laughter and suffused with light, 
O Lord, in such a time appoint my going, 
When the hands clench, and the cold face grows white, 
And the spark dies within the feeble brain, 
Spilling its star-dust back to dust again.

Stephen Vincent Benet’s other poems:

1. The General Public
2. The White Peacock
3. The Mountain Whippoorwill
4. Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room
5. Rain after a Vaudeville Show

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