Cold Blooded Creatures
Cold Blooded Creatures
Original Text
Elinor Wylie, Black Armour: A Book of Poems (New York: George H. Doran, 1923): 42. PS 3545 Y45 B5 1923 Robarts Library
1Man, the egregious egoist,
2(In mystery the twig is bent,)
3Imagines, by some mental twist,
4That he alone is sentient
5Of the intolerable load
6Which on all living creatures lies,
7Nor stoops to pity in the toad
8The speechless sorrow of its eyes.
9He asks no questions of the snake,
10Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
11Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
12Swim staring at a night-mare doom.
Publication Notes
Cf. Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie, foreword by
William Rose Benét (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1945): 70. PS 3545 Y45 A17 Robarts Library
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004