Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THREE MORNINGS, by GENEVIEVE TAGGARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THREE MORNINGS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: You're making me a crown that will not go
Last Line: Me, as I run the gamut of my lover.
Alternate Author Name(s): Wolf, Robert Leopold, Mrs.
Subject(s): Crowns; Love; Morning


I

You're making me a crown that will not go
On my small forehead, being welded from
Metal too heavy for a mortal whom
You love but would not punish. Even so
I climb where you are giddily lifting slow
Laboring arms, to make this crown that is
Tall as a city, fragile as a kiss,
And waved like towers in water to and fro.

Here in the arches and the scaffolding
I turn from under solid rock you've hewn
To find a pansy painted on its stem,
With waltzing mushrooms in a mimic ring:
These you had tossed me, hammering a tune
Of iron rivets for my diadem.

II

You make grave mock of me, who follow where
A hundred little trails may lead to you.
Thinking you stay in some far cave with bare
Earth for your floor, and one great tilt of blue
Slanting a roof, I break the cobweb hair
That hangs across all woods I wander through,
And never find you -- only balsam air,
And broken webs where you have wandered too.

You are so wilful in your sweet extremes,
More savage and more delicate than I;
Seeking to find your fountain-head of streams
I come upon a mist-and-flower fly,
With petal wing and dot of emerald eye
Against a rushing waterfall of sky.

III

We who are welded in this sweet device
Know all the zones of being, from the snow
That folds and quiets, to the cutting ice,
The late and mellow summer with its slow
Maturing burden; winds that kneel and rise
In autumn volley; all the gusts that go
Over a grassy world in rippled guise:
These we have made one flesh by being so.

Before you were, I made my home in one
Unvaried narrow valley, I who now
Am given to plunder lands of utter sun
Nor yet denied pure burial in snow:
Feeling all mad variety glide over
Me, as I run the gamut of my lover.





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