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The Circle

Hazel Hall

Dreams—and an old, old waking,

An unspent vision gone;

Night, clean with silence, breaking

Into loud dawn.

A wonder that is blurring

The new day’s strange demands,

The indomitable stirring

Of folded hands.

Then only the hours’ pageant

And the drowsing sound of their creep,

Bringing at last the vagrant

Dreams of new sleep.

This poem is in the public domain.

Hazel Hall

Hazel Hall was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1886. She is the author of three published works: Curtains (John Lane Company, 1921), Walkers (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1923), and Cry of Time (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1928), which was collected by her sister and published posthumously. She was much-loved in her lifelong home state of Oregon. The Oregon Book Award is named jointly for Hall and poet William Stafford. Hall died in Portland, Oregon, in 1924.

About Hazel Hall

Themes

About this Poem

“The Circle” was originally published in Curtains (John Lane Company, 1921).

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More by this poet

Two Sewing

The Wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.

Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered.

Hazel Hall

1921

Mending

Here are old things:
Fraying edges,
Ravelling threads;
And here are scraps of new goods,
Needles and thread,
An expectant thimble,
A pair of silver-toothed scissors.
Thimble on a finger,
New thread through an eye;
Needle, do not linger,
Hurry as you ply.
If you ever would be through
Hurry, scurry, fly!
Here are patches,
Felled edges,
Darned threads,
Strengthening old utility,
Pending the coming of the new.
Yes, I have been mending …
But also,
I have been enacting
A little travesty on life.

Hazel Hall

2015

Hours

I have known hours built like cities,
House on grey house, with streets between
That lead to straggling roads and trail off,
Forgotten in a field of green;

Hours made like mountains lifting
White crests out of the fog and rain,
And woven of forbidden music—
Hours eternal in their pain.

Hazel Hall

2014