Florence Wilkinson. Speech. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

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

Speech

By Florence Wilkinson


WORDS, words, words,
Like starry flies on the sleeper’s brain.
Listen, all over the roads of earth
You can hear our steps like rain!

We are loud, ephemeral, vain,	5
Motes in the sunlight stirred;
Yet blazoned with ancestry,
For God himself is a Word.

Words, words, words,
Nought may put us to scorn!	10
Yea, the unanswering dead,
And the mouth of the newly born.