Harley Graves. I Came to Be Alone. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

I Came to Be Alone

By Harley Graves


From “Songs from the Woods” I WENT out from the world of futile talking and trying,
From the world of the wearing of clothes to the nude and silent sky,
And into the woods I came, to the easily flowing river,
Here of my own nude soul to ask, “What manner of man am I?”

But I have strangely forgotten all that I dreamed and wanted,	5
All that I thought and spoke and dared only a month ago.
Even the friends of my heart I have lost in the glancing shadows,
And the slim white self I see in the stream is the only self I know.

I shall remember again, perhaps, when the blessed summer passes;
But now—oh, nothing but storm or peace under a bending sky,	10
Racket of winds at night that slap and tug at the flapping canvas,
And the rock of a good canoe by day on the rapids racing by!

I shall remember again, perhaps, but now I have clean forgotten—
For I have been glad of hunger and thirst, the fear of death I have known;
Jagged rocks in the rip I have seen and quiet waters beyond them,	15
And the clean green banks of perfect rest, since I came to be alone!