Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

I Came to Be Alone

Harley Graves

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,

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,

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,

And the clean green banks of perfect rest, since I came to be alone!