Poem by Amy Lowell

Patience

Be patient with you?
When the stooping sky
Leans down upon the hills
And tenderly, as one who soothing stills
An anguish, gathers earth to lie
Embraced and girdled.  Do the sun-filled men
Feel patience then?
Be patient with you?
When the snow-girt earth
Cracks to let through a spurt
Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt
A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth
To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men
Feel patience then?
Be patient with you?
When pain’s iron bars
Their rivets tighten, stern
To bend and break their victims; as they turn,
Hopeless, there stand the purple jars
Of night to spill oblivion.  Do these men
Feel patience then?
Be patient with you?
You!  My sun and moon!
My basketful of flowers!
My money-bag of shining dreams!  My hours,
Windless and still, of afternoon!
You are my world and I your citizen.
What meaning can have patience then?

1. The Coal Picker
2. The Cross-Roads
3. Monadnock in Early Spring
4. The Precinct. Rochester
5. Miscast II

Edith Wharton Patience ("PATIENCE and I have traveled hand in hand")

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