To Don Quixote

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees	
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,	
The zebra stripes along his jaw	
Swelling to maculate giraffe.	
 
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,	
Death and the Raven drift above	
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.	
 
Gloomy Orion and the Dog	
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape	
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees	
 
Slips and pulls the table cloth	
Overturns a coffee-cup,	
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;	
 
The silent man in mocha brown	
Sprawls at the window-

T. S. Eliot

1920

A Sick-Room Idyll

When Nellie sits beside my bed,
She thinks, to please a Poet,
Her talk must be of books,
Although I’d rather she’d forego it.

William Gay

1911

Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds
Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim;
Against the ice-white wall of light in the west
Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.
Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;
Mount upward past my window; swoop again;
In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls
The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf . . .
Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reach
To draw chill curtains and shut out the dark,
Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand,
To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud,

Conrad Aiken

1922

Poems

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To Don Quixote

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

A Sick-Room Idyll

Twilights, V

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