I <br />Maryland, Virginia, Caroline <br />Pent images in sleep <br />Clay valleys rocky hills old fields of pine <br />Unspeakable and deep <br /> <br />Out of that source of time my farthest blood <br />Runs strangely to this day <br />Unkempt the fathers waste in solitude <br />Under the hills of clay <br /> <br />Far from their woe fled to its thither side <br />To a river in Tennessee <br />In an alien house I will stay <br />Yet find their breath to be <br />All that my stars betide- <br />There some time to abide <br />Took wife and child with me, <br /> <br />II <br />When it is all over and the blood <br />Runs out, do not bury this man <br />By the far river (where never stood <br />His fathers) flowing to the West, <br />But take him East where life began. <br />my brothers, there is rest <br />In the depths of an eastward river <br />That I can understand; only <br />Do not think the truth we hold <br />I hold the slighter for this lonely <br />Reservation of the heart: <br />Men cannot live forever <br />But they must die forever <br />So take this body at sunset <br />To the great stream whose pulses start <br />In the blue hills, and let <br />These ashes drift from the Long Bridge <br />Where only a late gull breaks <br />That deep and populous grave. <br /> <br />III <br />By the great river the forefathers to beguile <br />Them, being inconceivably young, carved out <br />Deep hollows of memory on a river isle <br />Now lost-their murmur the ghost of a shout <br /> <br />In the hollows where the forefathers <br />Without beards, their faces bright and long, <br />Lay down at sunset by the cool river <br />In the tall willows amid birdsong; <br /> <br />And the long sleep by the cool river <br />They've slept full and long, till now the air <br />Waits twilit for their echo; the burning shiver <br />Of August strikes like a hawk the crouching hare.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/emblems-2/
