Archibald MacLeish

Here you will find the Poem Lines For A Prologue of poet Archibald MacLeish

Lines For A Prologue

These alternate nights and days, these seasons 
Somehow fail to convince me. It seems 
I have the sense of infinity! 


(In your dreams, O crew of Columbus, 
O listeners over the sea 
For the surf that breaks upon Nothing?) 


Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden. 
I thought, What time is it? I thought, 
Time?Is it Time still??Now is it Time? 


(Tell me your dreams, O sailors: 
Tell me, in sleep did you climb 
The tall masts, and before you?) 


At night the stillness of old trees 
Is a leaning over and the inertness 
Of hills is a kind of waiting. 


(In sleep, in a dream, did you see 
The world?s end? Did the water 
Break?and no shore?Did you see?) 


Strange faces come through the streets to me 
Like messengers: and I have been warned 
By the moving slowly of hands at a window. 


Oh, I have the sense of infinity? 
But the world, sailors, is round. 
They say there is no end to it.