Allen Tate Poems

Hit Title Date Added
1.
Ode To The Confederate Dead

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
...

2.
The Mediterranean

Where we went in the boat was a long bay
a slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone--
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:
...

3.
Light

Last night I fled until I came
To streets where leaking casements dripped
Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame;
A nervous window bled.
...

4.
The Subway

Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell
Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red
Reverberance of hail upon the dead
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5.
Winter Mask

I
Towards nightfall when the wind
Tries the eaves and casements
(A winter wind of the mind
...

6.
The Wolves

There are wolves in the next room waiting
With heads bent low, thrust out, breathing
At nothing in the dark; between them and me
...

7.
The Meaning Of Death

I rise, gentlemen, it is the pleasant hour.
Darkness falls. The night falls.
...

8.
To A Romantic

You hold your eager head
Too high in the air, you walk
As if the sleepy dead
Had never fallen to drowse
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9.
The Meaning Of Life

Think about it at will: there is that
Which is the commentary; there's that other,
Which may be called the immaculate
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10.
Unnatural Love

Landor, not that I doubt your word,
That you had strove with none
At seventy-five and had deferred
To nature and art alone;
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