Mary Austin. Whence? Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Whence?

By Mary Austin


I DO not know who sings my songs
Before they are sung by me.

For my mind is an ordered house
Where never a song should be;
And the world is the sort of a place	5
That my judicious spirit grieves.
Yet when my thoughts are seated round
With their eyes upon the ground,
The little songs come flimmering
Like swallows round the eaves.	10

And when my life is as dry as a gourd,
My heart the pebble, rattled by despair,
Shaken at the funeral
Of all the gods that were,
I stretch my thoughts in the empty room—	15
And suddenly my songs are there.