Chapter 17
Poem 17 of 30 American Poems by Various. Patience by Amy Lowell. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Matt Burrart. Patience.
Be patient with you when the stooping sky leans down upon the hills, and tenderly, as one whose soothing stills and anguish gathers earth to lie embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men feel patience then? Be patient with you when the snow-girt earth cracks to let through a spurt of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt a snow drop leaps.
How mark its worth! Two eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men feel patient then? Be patient with you when pains iron bars, their rivets, tightened, stern to bend and break their victims as they turn, hopeless, there stand the purple jars of night to spill oblivion.
Do these men feel patience then? Be patient with you. You my sun and moon, my basket full of flowers, my money-bag of shining dreams, my hours, endless and still of afternoon, you are my world and I your citizen. What meaning can have patience then?
End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
