Trumbull Stickney

“T IME'S a circumference

Whereof the segment of our station seems

A long straight line from nothing into naught.

Therefore we say " progress, " " infinity " —

Dull words whose object

Hangs in the air of error and delights

Our boyish minds ahunt for butterflies.

For aspiration studies not the sky

But looks for stars; the victories of faith

Are soldiered none the less with certainties,

And all the multitudinous armies decked

With banners blown ahead and flute before

March not to the desert or th' Elysian fields,

But in the track of some discovery,

The grip and cognizance of something true,

Which won resolves a better distribution

Between the dreaming mind and real truth.

I cannot understand you.

'T is because

You lean over my meaning's edge and feel

A dizziness of the things I have not said.”
― Trumbull Stickney

“Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers.”
― Trumbull Stickney