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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CLERMONT, by AUGUST H. MASON First Line: There is a poetry of sleep Last Line: Within a sleeping town. | |||
There is a poetry of sleep, The noon sleep that lies on clover-bloom And deep in summer leafage spreads Along the generous orchard bough, The sleep of legend-keeping years Which I have known on August afternoons In college-towered Clermont. In Clermont there is idle afternoon: Lavender that grows beside the wall Has fragrant welcome for the bees Who drone away the amber hours Conferring in its purple courts. The periwinkle gentle is, and quiet, As are the antique clocks indoors, Each one arrested by a different fiat. Above Clermont the full day-moon Rides high and placid all the afternoon, Yet scholared Age bowed heavily Over a treatise on the astrolabe Sees not, beyond his cloister wall, The moon's pure vessel of translucent pearl. His hands are purple-grey, his lips Like summer flowers ashened in the fall. Often have I seen the towers of Clermont, Its well-dreamed walks, its mossy roofs, Pure lawns that wear late summer's yellow gown, The pigeons blinking in their porch: A college sleeping for an hundred years Within a sleeping town. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON GREATNESS IN POETS by AUGUST H. MASON YELLOW AND GRAY by AUGUST H. MASON AGAINST THE REST OF THE YEAR by JAMES GALVIN DOMESDAY BOOK: JOHN SCOFIELD by EDGAR LEE MASTERS GRAND ARMY PLAZA by KAREN SWENSON THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS TO THE SOUTH ON ITS NEW SLAVERY by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR IN HOSPITAL: 28. DISCHARGED by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY TO THE WATER NYMPHS DRINKING AT THE FOUNTAIN by ROBERT HERRICK |
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