AGAINST TIME: Poetry, by Louis Untermeyer

AGAINTS TIME

The event stands clear of history. Originality is not in ranks of trees, but in this tree; and every fruit is the first fruit, shapely and absolute. Events afe individuaI as pain. This dar, this trouble, fingering rain, has never been. Beauty comes clean, in the cock’s rusty vowels or in sky-searching towers, that lift themselves light as a swift. Time’s a machine, that clocks the outworn, the untrue. But we bave seen what no clock has recordoo; we bave seen Time counted and complet; we bave seen newness begetting newness, and the old refuse to die, take hold, assume free shape, deny the habitual mould; while earth, lave, substance grew as it was made to do. And the event stood new.

(Louis Untermeyer)

http://www.amazon.com/Treasury-Great-Poems-Louis-Untermeyer/dp/0883657961