Something begins, begins; Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad In flesh and spirit and fire. Something is loosed to change the shaken world. - Stephen Vincent Benét

I stumbled, slipped... and all was gone That I had gained. Once more I lay Before the long bright Hell of ice. And still the light was far away. There was red mist before my eyes Or I could tell you how I went Across the swaying firmament, A glittering torture of cold stars, And how I fought in Titan wars... And died... and lived again upon The rack... and how the horses strain When their red task is nearly done. . . <p> I only know that there was Pain, Infinite and eternal Pain. And that I fell — and rose again.

American muse, whose strong and diverse heart
So many men have tried to understand
But only made it smaller with their art,
Because you are as various as your land,

As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers,
Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows,
As native as the shape of Navajo quivers,
And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.

We heard the shots in the night But nobody knew next day what the trouble was And a man must go to his work. So I didn't see him For three days, then, and me near out of my mind And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him.