AN ANTHOLOGY BY HAROLD BLOOM

HAROLD BLOOM AND JESSE ZUBA, EDITORS

A Speciul Publication of THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA Contents

Introduction, by Harold Bloom xxv About This Book, by Jesse Zuba xlix

The Bay Psalm Book Psalme 19 1 Thomas Dudley "Dim Eyes, deaf Ears, cold stomack shew" 2 Roger Williams "God gives them sleep on Ground, on Straw" 3 "Boast not proud English, of thy birth & blood," 3 "They see Gods wonders that are call'd" 4 "The Indians prize not English gold," 4 Anne Bradstreet The Flesh and the Spirit 5 For Delivere from a feaver 8 "In silent night when rest I took" 8 'As weary pilgrim, now at rest" 10 John Saffin Consideratus Considerandus 11 Michael Wigglesworth from The Day of Doom: Vanity of Vanities 13 Edward Taylor from Preparatory Meditations: First Series 8. Joh. 6.51 17 38. IJoh. 2.1 18 from Preparatory Meditations: Second Series 12. Ezek. 37.24 19 18. Heb. 13.10 21 Let by rain 23 Upon a Spider Catching a Fly 24 Upon a Wasp Child with Cold 25 Huswifery 26 The Ebb and Flow 27 A Fig for thee Oh! Death 28

vii VIII CONTENTS

Benjamin Tompson 'A Neighbour's Tears" 29 Nicholas Noyes "A Consolatory Poem Dedicated unto Mr. Cotton Mather" 30 John Norton Jr. 'A Funeral Elogy" 34 Cotton Mather The Rain gasped for 37 Mather Byles "Great GOD, how frail a Thing is Man!" 38 William Billings Chester 41 An Anthem, for Thanksgiving: Psalm 148 42 Timothy Dwight from The Triumph of Infidelity 43 Philip Freneau On the Religion of Nature 44 Phillis Wheatley On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield 45 To a Lady on the Death of Three Relations 46 John Leland "The day is past and gone" 47 Joel Barlow from The Columbiad 48 John Quincy Adams O Lord, Thy All-Discerning Eyes 49 Richard Henry Dana Sr. The Little Beach-Bird 50 Emma Hart Willard Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep 51 Lydia Huntley Sigourney The Coral Insect 52 William Cullen Bryant Thanatopsis 54 To a Waterfowl 56 Forest Hymn 57 Hymn of the Waldenses 60 CONTENTS

George Washington Doane Evening 61 Ralph Waldo Emerson The Problem 62 The Rhodora 64 Dirge 64 Brahma 66 Boston Hymn 67 rvcoGi ZEOUTOV 70 "There is in all the sons of men" 73 "I will not live out of me" 74 "He walked the streets of great New York" 75 "Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift," 76 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life 76 The Bridge 78 The Jewish Cemetery at Newport 80 Christmas Bells 82 My Cathedral 83 John Greenleaf Whittier First-Day Thoughts 83 The Eternal Goodness 84 Unity 87 Oliver Wendell Holmes The Chambered Nautilus 88 The Living Temple 89 Edmund Hamilton Sears "It came upon the midnight clear," 91 Christopher Pearse Cranch Correspondences 92 Enosis 93 Jones Very The New Birth 94 Enoch 95 The Cup 95 The New World 96 The Created 96 Yourself 97 The Cottage 97 Autumn Flowers 98 The Origin of Man 99 Night 100 CONTENTS

William Ellery Channing Hymn of the Earth 100 Henry David Thoreau Sic Vita 101 Music 102 Inspiration 103 Julia Ward Howe Battle-Hymn of the Republic 106 James Russell Lowell After the Burial 107 Herman Melville from Moby-Dick 109 from Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land no The Enthusiast in Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century 112 Pontoosuce 112 Walt Whitman "In vain were nails driven through my hands." 115 from Song of Myself 115 from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 120 As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life 122 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 125 As Adam Early in the Morning 134 Chanting the Square Deific 134 A Noiseless Patient Spider 136 Frederick Goddard Tuckerman Sonnets 137 "Not the round natural world, not the deep mind," 138 Robert Lowry Beautiful River 138 Emily Dickinson "I got so I could take his name-" 140 "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," 141 "I know that He exists." 141 "After great pain, a formal feeling comes-" 142 "Dare you see a Soul at the 'White Heat'?" 142 "Our journey had advanced-" 143 "It might be lonelier" 143 "I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-" 144 "To pile like Thunder to it's close" 145 "'Heavenly Father'-take to thee" 145 CONTENTS

"The Spirit lasts-but in what mode-" 145 "My life closed twice before it's close;" 146 Helen Hunt Jackson A Last Prayer 146 Knowles Shaw Sowing in the Morning 147 Phillips Brooks O Little Town of Bethlehem 148 Sanford F. Bennett "There's a land that is fairer than day," 149 William Dean Howells What Shall It Profit? 150 Sidney Lanier A Ballad of Trees and the Master 150 John Banister Tabb Nekros 151 Communion 151 Tenebrae 152 Emma Lazarus In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport 152 The New Ezekiel 154 Edwin Markham In Death Valley 154 Lizette Woodworth Reese Trust 155 This Very Hour 155 Edith Wharton Terminus 156 W.E.B. Du Bois A Litany at Atlanta 158 Edwin Arlington Robinson The Children of the Night 161 Karma 163 James Weldon Johnson The Creation 163 Paul Laurence Dunbar An Ante-Bellum Sermon 166 Religion 169 XII CONTENTS

Vincent O'Sullivan Out of the Cloud 169 Tr,umbull Stickney "He said: 'If in his image I was made," 170 'And, the last day being come, Man stood alone" 170 Anna Hempstead Branch In the Beginning Was the Word 171 Robert Frost A Prayer in Spring 175 Bereft 175 Design 176 Once by the Pacific 176 Directive 177 Ameen Rihani The Song of Siva 179 Renunciation 180 A Sufi Song 180 Carl Sandburg Our Prayer of Thanks 181 For You 181 William Stanley Braithwaite The Eternal Self ' 183 Vachel Lindsay General William Booth Enters Heaven 184 The Unpardonable Sin 186 Wallace Stevens Tea at the Palaz of Hoon •. 187 Sunday Morning 187 God Is Good. It Is a Beautiful Night 191 Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit 192 Angel Surrounded by Paysans 193 Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour 194 Of Mere Being 194 Kahlil Gibran O Soul 195 William Carlos Williams Burning the Christmas Greens 195 The Gift 198 Sara Teasdale The Sanctuary 200 CONTENTS

H.D. from The Walls Do Not Fall 200 from The Flowering of the Rod 202 Moyshe-Leyb Halpern Memento Mori 205 The Will 205 Robinson Jeffers Shine, Perishing Republic 207 Apology for Bad Dreams 208 Hurt Hawks 211 The Treasure 212 Marianne Moore The Steeple-Jack 213 Elinor Wylie Address to My Soul 216 T. S. Eliot The Hippopotamus 217 Ash-Wednesday 218 Journey of the Magi 225 A Song for Simeon 227 Little Gidding 228 H. Leivick The Sturdy in Me 235 John Crowe Ransom Armageddon 236 Conrad Aiken Tetelestai 239 Mikhail Naimy Autumn Leaves 242 Claude McKay I Know My Soul • 244 Russian Cathedral 244 Edna St. Vincent Millay God's World 245 Samuel Greenberg God 245 E. E. Cummings "i thank You God for this amazing" 246 CONTENTS

Charles Reznikoff Luzzato 247 Spinoza 247 "There is nobody in the street" 248 Jean Toomer Prayer 248 The Gods Are Here 248 Jacob Glatshteyn Without Offerings 249 Louise Bogan Night 250 John Wheelwright Fish Food 251 Come Over and Help Us 252 Bread-Word Giver 255 Melvin B. Tolson A Song for Myself 256 Leonie Adams Bell Tower 261 Hart Crane Lachrymae Christi 262 from Voyages 263 from The Bridge 264 O Carib Isle! 276 The Broken Tower 277 Thomas A. Dorsey Take My Hand, Precious Lord 278 Allen Tate The Cross 279 The Twelve 280 Sonnets at Christmas 280 Sterling A. Brown Sister Lou 281 Laura Riding There Is No Land Yet 283 Faith Upon the Waters 284 Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers 285 Prayer 286 Heaven 286 CONTENTS

Countee Cullen Simon the Cyrenian Speaks 286 The Litany of the Dark People 287 Carl Rakosi Meditation ("Three things remind me of You,") 288 Meditation ("How long will you remain a boy?") 288 Richard Eberhart The Groundhog 289 The Soul Longs to Return Whence It Came 290 Louis Zukofsky from "A" - 12 292 Stanley Kunitz Benediction 296 Kenneth Rexroth The Signature of All Things 298 Robert Penn Warren Evening Hawk 300 Heart of Autumn 301 W. H. Auden from Horae Canonicae 302 George Oppen Psalm 307 Theodore Roethke The Waking 308 In a Dark Time 309 James Agee "This little time the breath and bulk of being" 310 Elizabeth Bishop The Unbeliever 310 Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance 311 At the Fishhouses 313 William Everson A Canticle to the Waterbirds 315 Jean Garrigue A Demon Came to Me 319 Robert Hayden "From the corpse woodpiles, from the ashes" 319 Baha'u'llah in the Garden of Ridwan 320 The Broken Dark 321 XVI CONTENTS

Ice Storm '. 322 'As my blood was drawn," 322 John Frederick Nims Prayer 323 The Dark Night 324 Knowledge of God 326 Muriel Rukeyser Are You Born? /I 326 Are You Born? / II 327 Delmore Schwartz At a Solemn Musick 327 Karl Shapiro The Alphabet 329 May Swenson Question 330 The Lightning 331 Big-Hipped Nature 331 Each Like a Leaf 332 John Berryman Eleven Addresses to the Lord 334 David Ignatow Kaddish 341 Randall Jar r ell Jonah 342 William Stafford With My Crowbar Key 343 Thomas Merton St. Paul 344 In Silence 345 Elegy for the Monastery Barn 346 Robert Lowell Where the Rainbow Ends 347 William Bronk Virgin and Child with Music and Numbers 348 The Mind's Limitations Are Its Freedom 349 Robert Duncan Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow 350 CONTENTS

The Natural Doctrine .- 351 God-Spell 352 Amy Clampitt A Procession at Candlemas 353 Easter Morning 358 Brought From Beyond 358 A Silence 359 Howard Nemerov The Loon's Cry 361 Richard Wilbur 'A World Without Objects Is a Sensible Emptiness" 364 Advice to a Prophet 365 A Christmas Hymn 366 In a Churchyard 367 The Proof 369 James Dickey Adam in Winter 369 Walking on Water 371 Alan Dugan Love Song: I and Thou 372 Anthony Hecht A Hill 373 Adam 375 Saul and David 376 Richard Hugo St. Clement's: Harris 377 Denise Levertov The Jacob's Ladder 379 Flickering Mind 379 Suspended 380 James Schuyler Our Father 381 James Baldwin Amen 383 Edgar Bowers From William Tyndale to John Frith 384 Adam 385 Jacob 385 Jack Gilbert The White Heart of God 386 XVIII CONTENTS

Carolyn Kizer Shalimar Gardens 387 Kenneth Koch Alive for an Instant 388 Samuel Menashe Paradise - After Giovanni di Paolo 389 Gerald Stern Lord, Forgive a Spirit 389 A. R. Ammons Prodigal 390 Terrain 391 The City Limits 392 The Arc Inside and Out 393 For Harold Bloom 395 Easter Morning 396 Robert Bly The Night Abraham Called to the Stars 399 Allen Ginsberg Sunflower Sutra 400 Psalm III 402 Wales Visitation 402 James Merrill An Upward Look 405 John Ashbery The Recital 406 Syringa " 414 By Forced Marches 417 Galway Kinnell To Christ Our Lord 418 W. S. Merwin Lemuel's Blessing 419 Noah's Raven 421 Fourth Psalm: The Cerements 421 The Blind Seer of Ambon 423 James Wright The Refusal 425 A Blessing 426 Saint Judas 427 Donald Hall A Small Fig Tree 428 A Grace 428 CONTENTS

Samuel Hazo The Holy Surprise of Right Now 429 Philip Levine A Late Answer 430 To My God in His Sickness 432 Cynthia Ozick "When that with tragic rapture Moses stood..." 435 Anne Sexton Rowing 437 Joseph Awad Forjude's Lebanon 439 Alvin Feinman Pilgrim Heights 440 November Sunday Morning 441 John Hollander At the New Year 442 Adam's Task 443 A Shadow of a Great Rock-in a Weary Land 444 Gary Snyder Milton by Firelight 447 Burning Island 448 Ripples on the Surface 450 Allen Grossman The Song of the Lord 450 Sylvia Plath Black Rook in Rainy Weather 451 N. Scott Momaday The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee 453 Carriers of the Dream Wheel 454 Mark Strand White 454 Orpheus Alone 455 from Dark Harbor 457 James Applewhite The Sex of Divinity 458 Ronald Johnson from ARK: Beam 30, The Garden 459 Mary Oliver When Death Comes 460 XX CONTENTS

Grace Schulman Blessed Is the Light 461 Prayer 462 Charles Wright Apologia Pro Vita Sua 463 Jay Wright The Origin of Mary in a Cathedral Choir 473 Desire's Persistence 475 Lucille Clifton the astrologer predicts at mary's birth 479 anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter 480 mary's dream 480 how he is coming then 480 holy night 481 a song of mary 481 island mary _. 481 "mary mary astonished by God" 482 C. K. Williams The Vessel 482 Michael S. Harper Peace on Earth 483 Charles Simic Mystic Life 485 Frank Bidart The Sacrifice 488 Paul Mariani Giottoesque 489 Robert Pinsky The Knight's Prayer 491 Simon J. Ortiz The Creation, According to Coyote 493 Alfred Corn Jerusalem 494 Louise Gliick Lamentations 496 Matins 498 Vespers 499 Michael Palmer Untitled (September '92) 500 CONTENTS

J. D. McClatchy Dervish 502 Carol Muske-Dukes When He Fell 504 Vicki Hearne Good Friday: No Way Out but Straight Through, Jack 505 The Leisure of God 506 Linda Hogan Me, Crow, Fish, and the Magi 506 The Inside of Things 508 Jane Kenyon Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks 509 Yusef Komunyakaa Thanks 510 Geoffrey O'Brien The Prophet 511 Agha Shahid Ali First Day of Spring 512 God 513 Tonight 513 Edward Hirsch Away from Dogma 515 James Richardson Evening Prayer 518 Arthur Sze The Unnamable River 519 Chase Twichell Cloud of Unknowing 520 Bill Wadsworth The Authority of Elsewhere 521 Jorie Graham Prayer 523 Joy Harjo A Map to the Next World 526 Garrett Hongo O-Bon: Dance for the Dead 529 Volcano House 530 CONTENTS

Andrew Hudgins Christ as a Gardener 531 Judith Ortiz Cofer The Campesino's Lament 532 Chard DeNiord Transubstantiation 533 Rita Dove Receiving the Stigmata 534 Markjarman Transfiguration. . > 535 Naomi Shihab Nye My Uncle Mohammed at Mecca, 1981 539 Alberto Rios The Death of Anselmo Luna 540 Alan Shapiro Prayer on the Temple Steps 541 Gjertrud Schnackenberg Supernatural Love 542 Rosanna Warren Hagar 544 Cyprian 545 Antique 547 Scott Cairns Prospect of the Interior 548 Louise Erdrich New Vows 549 Thylias Moss The Warmth of Hot Chocolate 549 A Man 551 John Burt On the Will to Believe 553 Sonnets for Mary of Nazareth 554 Robert Vasquez Belief 555 Susan Wheeler That Been to Me My Lives Light and Saviour 556 April Bernard Psalm of the Tree-Dweller 558 CONTENTS

Lucie Brock-Broido The One Theme of Which Everything Else Is a Variation 559 Henri Cole Apollo 560 Presepio 567 Blur 568 Dionisio D. Martinez Standard Time: Novena for My Father 571 Joseph Harrison The Relic 572 Li-Young Lee This Hour and What Is Dead 574 Night Mirror 575 Esther Schor Alef 576 Carl Phillips Visitation 577 A Great Noise 578 From the Devotions 579 Josephine Singer Provision 582 David Woo Eden 583 Ballad of Infinite Forgetfulness 584 David Daniel Seven-Star Bird 585 Martha Serpas As If There Were Only One 587 Witness Tree 588 Psalm at High Tide 589 Poem Found 590 Khaled Mattawa I Was Buried injanzoor 591 Suji Kwock Kim The Tree of Unknowing 592 Brett Foster The First Request of Lazarus 593 XXIV CONTENTS

American Indian Songs and Chants The Thanksgivings (Iroquois) 597 This Is to Frighten a Storm (Cherokee) 598 To Go to the Water (Cherokee) 598 Is This Real (Pawnee) 599 Ghost-Dance Songs (Kiowa) 599 Therefore I Must Tell the Truth (Navajo) 600 from The Night Chant (Navajo) 601 Song of the Sky Loom (Tewa) 604 Prayer to the Deceased (Tewa) 604 The Creation of the Earth (Pima) 605 Special Request for the Children of Mother Corn (Zuni) 605 Deer Song (Yaqui) 606 Shaman's Song (Modoc) 607 Shaman's Song (Inuit) 608

Spirituals and Anonymous Hymns Balm in Gilead 609 Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel 609 Ezekiel Saw de Wheel 610 Free at Last 611 Got a Home in That Rock 611 I Know Moon-Rise 612 Let My People Go 613 Lonesome Valley 615 Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Had 616 Poor Wayfaring Stranger 617 Simple Gifts 618 Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child 618 Steal Away 619 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot 619

Reader's Guide 623 Sources and Acknowledgments 639 Notes 655 Index of Poets 661 Index of Titles and First Lines 665