Elinor Morton Wylie (7 September 1885 – 16 December 1928) was an American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s.
Quotes
Under thorn, oak and ash
My body bent to the lash.
My body bent to the lash.
- Under oak, ash and thorn
My soul was born.
Under thorn, oak and ash
My body bent to the lash.- "Beltane", published in Last Poems of Elinor Wylie (1943)
Nets to Catch the Wind (1921)
Wild Peaches
- When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.- 1
- The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.- 1
- When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak,
We shall live well — we shall live very well.- 3
- Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.- 4
- I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.- 4
A Crowded Trolley Car
![](../I/m/Girl_riding_on_a_streetcar_8d27154v.jpg)
A bell is clanging, people sway
Hanging by their hands.
Hanging by their hands.
- The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray
Sharp as golden sands,
A bell is clanging, people sway
Hanging by their hands.
- Orchard of the strangest fruits
Hanging from the skies;
Brothers, yet insensate brutes
Who fear each others’ eyes.
- One man stands as free men stand
As if his soul might be
Brave, unbroken; see his hand
Nailed to an oaken tree.
External links
- Elinor Wylie at the Poetry Foundation - Biography and 8 poems (A Crowded Trolley Car, Cold Blooded Creatures, Epitaph, Full Moon, Little Elegy, Speed the Parting, Valentine, Wild Peaches)
- Works by Elinor Wylie at Project Gutenberg
- Poems of Elinor Wylie at Poemtree.com
- Poems of Elinor Wylie at Poets' Corner
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