Gladys Cromwell: The Poet’s Thrift (Poem)

The Poet’s Thrift

My landscape only need comprise low hills,
For these are eminent and limitless
To me. They mean more than my dreams express;

They mean more than my word or deed fulfils.
The slender trees, the tuneless whip-poor-wills,
Impart quite ample themes to loneliness.
I find enough in scant elusiveness
Of springs and little brooks. My spirit thrills
To beauty, unprepared for the sublime.
I wonder, though, when I shall be completed
Even to transcribe these hills? Sometime
This landscape in few lines will show to me
The subtle mysteries I have entreated,
In the simple realm of poetry.

Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
The Poet’s Thrift
From: Songs of the Dust, 1915

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell