Elinor Wylie

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations 1 When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap coonskin cap A cap made from a raccoon pelt , and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut butternut A shade of yellow similar to khaki. In the Civil War, some Confederate soldiers wore butternut-colored uniforms, leading them to be nicknamed Butternuts. Southern sympathizers in the North were also referred to as Butternuts. ’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor lotus-eating ancestor An allusion to the Lotos (Lotus) Eaters of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus’ men who ate the lotos lost the desire to return home. In Robert Fitzgerald’s translation: “but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos / never cared to report, nor to return: / they longed to stay forever, browsing on / that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland” (Book IX, lines 101-104). , We’ll swim in milk and honey milk and honey Attributes of the Promised Land mentioned several times in the Bible, first at Exodus 3.8, where God promises the Israelites “a land flowing with milk and honey” (New Revised Standard Version) till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong scuppernong A type of wine made from the scuppernong grape, native to the surrounding area of the Scuppernong River in North Carolina ; All seasons sweet All seasons sweet Echoes Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lines, “Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee”, from his poem “ Frost at Midnight ” , but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers mufflers Heavy scarves ; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins water moccasins A venomous water snake, also known as cottonmouth Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake Chesapeake The Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland In shoals shoals Sandbars new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback canvasback A wild duck “so called from the color of the back” (A Dictionary of Americanisms, 1951) . 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones Puritan marrow of my bones The Puritans were a persecuted religious group of English Protestants, in the 16th and 17th centuries that wanted to reform or “purify” the Church of England from within. Some Puritans eventually came to New England in the 1630s and 40s, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “Puritan” has been used as a pejorative term to describe strict moralists against all worldly pleasures. Marrow is a fatty substance found in the cavities of bones, where blood cells are produced. Marrow provides moisture to bones, which give them further strength. “Marrow of my bones” is a phrase common back to the Bible, referring less literally to the center or core of a thing or issue. There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Spate Freshet or flood Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves Sheaves A bundle of cut stalks of grain tied together after reaping ; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter sleepy winter In the same volume,Nets to Catch the Wind, Wylie published the poem “Winter Sleep.” , like the sleep of death.

Too high, too high to pluck My heart shall swing. A fruit no bee shall suck, No wasp shall sting. If on some night of cold It falls to ground In apple-leaves of gold I’ll wrap it round. And I shall seal it up With spice and salt, In a carven silver cup, In a deep vault. Before my eyes are blind And my lips mute, I must eat core and rind Of that same fruit. Before my heart is dust At the end of all, Eat it I must, I must Were it bitter gall. But I shall keep it sweet By some strange art; Wild honey I shall eat When I eat my heart. O honey cool and chaste As clover’s breath! Sweet Heaven I shall taste Before my death.

I shall not sprinkle with dust A creature so clearly lunar; You must die—but of course you must— And better later than sooner. But if it should be in a year That year itself must perish; How dingy a thing is fear, And sorrow, how dull to cherish! And if it should be in a day That day would be dark by evening, But the morning might still be gay And the moon have golden leavening. And beauty’s a moonlight grist That comes to the mills of dying; The silver grain may be missed But there’s no great good in crying. Though luminous things are mould They survive in a glance that crossed them, And it’s not very kind to scold The empty air that has lost them. The limpid blossom of youth Turns into a poison berry; Having perceived this truth I shall not weep but be merry. Therefore die when you please; It’s not very wise to worry; I shall not shiver and freeze; I shall not even be sorry. Beautiful things are wild; They are gone, and you go after; Therefore I mean, my child, To charm your going with laughter. Love and pity are strong, But wisdom is happily greater; You will die, I suppose, before long, Oh, worser sooner than later!

Withouten you No rose can grow; No leaf be green If never seen Your sweetest face; No bird have grace Or power to sing; Or anything Be kind, or fair, And you nowhere.

My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; The ermine muffled mouth and chin; I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozenges Of love and hate, I walked in these Striped and ragged rigmaroles; Along the pavement my footsoles Trod warily on living coals. Shouldering the thoughts I loathed, In their corrupt disguises clothed, Morality I could not tear From my ribs, to leave them bare Ivory in silver air. There I walked, and there I raged; The spiritual savage caged Within my skeleton, raged afresh To feel, behind a carnal mesh, The clean bones crying in the flesh.

For this she starred her eyes with salt And scooped her temples thin, Until her face shone pure of fault From the forehead to the chin. In coldest crucibles of pain Her shrinking flesh was fired And smoothed into a finer grain To make it more desired. Pain left her lips more clear than glass; It colored and cooled her hand. She lay a field of scented grass Yielded as pasture land. For this her loveliness was curved And carved as silver is: For this she was brave: but she deserved A better grave than this.

The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray Sharp as golden sands, A bell is clanging, people sway Hanging by their hands. Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff, Snatch and catch and grope; That face is yellow-pale, as if The fellow swung from rope. Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives, Glances strike and glare, Fingers tangle, Bluebeard’s wives Dangle by the hair. Orchard of the strangest fruits Hanging from the skies; Brothers, yet insensate brutes Who fear each others’ eyes. One man stands as free men stand As if his soul might be Brave, unbroken; see his hand Nailed to an oaken tree.

Man, the egregious egoist, (In mystery the twig is bent,) Imagines, by some mental twist, That he alone is sentient Of the intolerable load Which on all living creatures lies, Nor stoops to pity in the toad The speechless sorrow of its eyes. He asks no questions of the snake, Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom Where lidless fishes, broad awake, Swim staring at a night-mare doom.