Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height, A glory; but a negligible sight, For you had often seen a mountain-peak But not my paper. So we came to speak. A smoke, a smile, -- a good way to commence The comfortable exchange of difference! -- You a young engineer, five feet eleven, Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven, Liking a road-bed newly built and clean, Your fingers hot to cut away the green Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack, -- And I a poet, wistful of my betters, Reading George Meredith's high-hearted Letters, Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each Absorbing to himself -- as I to me And you to you -- a glad identity! After a while when the others went away, A curious kinship made us want to stay, Which I could tell you now; but at the time You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme, Until we found that we were college men And smoked more easily and smiled again; And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still: "I know your fine Greek Theatre on the hill At Berkeley!" With your happy Grecian head Upraised, "I never saw the place," you said. "Once I was free of class, I always went Out to the field." Young engineer, You meant as fair a tribute to the better part As ever I did. Beauty of the heart Is evident in temples. But it breathes Alive where athletes quicken airy wreaths, Which are the lovelier because they die. You are a poet quite as much as I, Though differences appear in what we do, And I an athlete quite as much as you. Because you half-surmised my quarter-mile And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile. Who knows but we shall look again and find The circus-man and drummer, not behind But leading in our visible estate, As discus-thrower and as laureate? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AMERICAN NAMES by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET CYCLAMENS by KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING, NONCHALANCE IS GOOD AND by MARIANNE MOORE THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ADDRESS TO A STEAM-VESSEL by JOANNA BAILLIE WRITTEN ON A MARBLE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD HINC LACHRIMAE; OR THE AUTHOR TO AURORA: 26 by WILLIAM BOSWORTH |