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“Description of Elysium” by James Agee 🇺🇸 (27 Nov 1909 – 16 May 1955)
There: far, friends our dear dominion:
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Whole health resides with peace,
Gladness and never harm,
There not time turning,
Nor fear of flower of snow
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Where marbling water slides
No charm may halt of chill,
Air aisling the open acres,
And all the gracious trees
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Spout up their standing fountains
Of wind-beloved green
And the blue conclaved mountains
Are grave guards
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Stone and springing field
Wide one tenderness,
The unalterable hour
Smiles deathlessness:
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No thing is there thinks:
Mind the witherer
Withers on the outward air:
We can not come there.
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Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
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The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
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Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
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Now thorn bone bare
Silenced with iron the branch’s gullet:
Rattling merely on the air
Of hornleaved holly:
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The stony mark where sand was by
The water of a nailed foot:
The berry harder than the beak:
The hole beneath the dead oak root:
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All now brought quiet
Through the latest throe
Quieted and ready and quiet:
Still not snow:
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Still thorn bone hare
Iron in the silenced gully
Rattling only of the air
Through hornleaved holly.