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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


TO AN INHABITANT OF PARADISE by SCUDDER MIDDLETON

First Line: HOW GOES IT IN YOUR STAR-LIT WORLD
Last Line: BEGINS TO MARCH ON PARADISE.

How goes it in your star-lit world-
The silences, the brooding wood?
Does there the tiger hunt no more,
The falcon twitter for his hood?

Have you stripped all the boughs that talk
And calmed the torrents from the hill?
Are lamb and wolf now reconciled?
Is hunger banished from your sill?

Does that inexorable whip,
Which drove us heedless face to face,
No longer burn along your veins
Or cut your new dispassionate grace?

Do you watch struggle unconcerned
Hear voices call you and not speak,
There in your timeless acres feel
Above your kinship with the weak?

Oh, guard the gates that shut you in!
Make sure the world behind your eyes!
My world of men and lust and wheels
Begins to march on Paradise.



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