Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GREEN ESCAPE by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY

Poet Analysis

First Line: AT THREE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Last Line: IN A ROW OF PIGEON HOLES!
AT three o'clock in the afternoon
On a hot September day,
I began to dream of a highland stream
And a frostbit russet tree;
Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship
(White canvas wet with spray)
And the swirling green and milk-foam clean
Along her canted lee.

I heard the quick staccato click
Of the typist's pounding keys,
And I had to brood of a wind more rude
Than that by a motor fanned --
And I lay inert in a flannel shirt
To watch the rhyming seas
Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl
On a beach of sun-blanched sand.

There is no desk shall tame my lust
For hills and windy skies;
My secret hope of the sea's blue slope
No clerkly task shall dull;
And though I print no echoed hint
Of adventures I devise,
My eyes still pine for the comely line
Of an outbound vessel's hull.

When I elope with an autumn day
And make my green escape,
I'll leave my pen to tamer men
Who have more docile souls;
For forest aisles and office files
Have a very different shape,
And it's hard to woo the ocean blue
In a row of pigeon holes!



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