Ms. Peony Moss offers "You, Andrew Marvell" by Archibald MacLeish, which I know I have read and which I largely remember for the title it gave to a science fiction story some time ago (I don't recall the author--perhaps Michael Bishop?) "And strange at Ecbatan the trees."
Go to her place and read it. I place it below so that I may return and savor it also in my commonplace book--thank you so much for this Ms. Moss.
You, Andrew Marvell
Archibald MacLeishAnd here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow growAnd strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia changeAnd now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward passAnd Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal onAnd deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
high through the clouds and overblownAnd over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hullsAnd Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that landNor now the long light on the sea:
And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on . . .
