“I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“Acquainted with the NightI have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,One luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“I am one who has been acquainted with the night”

“I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

“The Master Speed No speed of wind or water rushing bybut you have speed far greater. You can climbback up a stream of radiance to the sky,and back through history up the stream of time.And you were given this swiftness, not for hastenor chiefly that you may go where you will,but in the rush of everything to waste,that you may have the power of standing still--off any still or moving thing you say.Two such as you with such a master speedFrom one another once you are agreedthat life is only life forevermoretogether wing to wing and oar to oar.”

“The TelephoneWhen I was just as far as I could walkFrom here todayThere was an hourAll stillWhen leaning with my head against a flowerI heard you talk.Don't say I didn't for I heard you sayYou spoke from that flower on the window sill-Do you remember what it was you said ''First tell me what it was you thought you heard.''Having found the flower and driven a bee awayI leaned my headAnd holding by the stalkI listened and I thought I caught the wordWhat was itDid you call me by my name Or did you saySomeone said "Come"I heard it as I bowed.''I may have thought as much but not aloud.'Well so I came.”

“Back out of all this now too much for us,Back in a time made simple by the lossOf detail, burned, dissolved, and broken offLike graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,There is a house that is no more a houseUpon a farm that is no more a farmAnd in a town that is no more a town.The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct youWho only has at heart your getting lost,May seem as if it should have been a quarry—Great monolithic knees the former townLong since gave up pretense of keeping covered.And there’s a story in a book about it:Besides the wear of iron wagon wheelsThe ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,The chisel work of an enormous GlacierThat braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.You must not mind a certain coolness from himStill said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.Nor need you mind the serial ordealOf being watched from forty cellar holesAs if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.As for the woods’ excitement over youThat sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,Charge that to upstart inexperience.Where were they all not twenty years ago?They think too much of having shaded outA few old pecker-fretted apple trees.Make yourself up a cheering song of howSomeone’s road home from work this once was,Who may be just ahead of you on footOr creaking with a buggy load of grain.The height of the adventure is the heightOf country where two village cultures fadedInto each other. Both of them are lost.And if you’re lost enough to find yourselfBy now, pull in your ladder road behind youAnd put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.Then make yourself at home. The only fieldNow left’s no bigger than a harness gall.First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,The playthings in the playhouse of the children.Weep for what little things could make them glad.Then for the house that is no more a house,But only a belilaced cellar hole,Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.Your destination and your destiny’sA brook that was the water of the house,Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,Too lofty and original to rage.(We know the valley streams that when arousedWill leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)I have kept hidden in the instep archOf an old cedar at the watersideA broken drinking goblet like the GrailUnder a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)Here are your waters and your watering place.Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”