Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ANCHORET, by BYRON MCCRAY JONES
First Line: Not in my lack, but my satiety
Last Line: That early ripens on the withered bough.

Not in my lack, but my satiety,
High Hermitage, you tell, lay my defeat;
Nor ever solitude for him could be,
Divested thus, yet in himself complete.

As the orange, luscious from the bitter root,
The chastened thought through once the knitted brow.
This is the scant, though ever sweeter fruit
That early ripens on the withered bough.