I Used to Think
I Used to Think
Original Text
The Poems of Trumbull Stickney, ed. George Cabot Lodge, William Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1905): 309 (no. I of XVII -- "Dramatic Fragments" -- among all the "Fragments"). PS 3537 T525 1905 Robarts Library.
1I used to think
2The mind essential in the body, even
3As stood the body essential in the mind:
4Two inseparable things, by nature equal
5And similar, and in creation's song
6Halving the total scale: it is not so.
7Unlike and cross like driftwood sticks they come
8Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine,
9A slab of rosewood: mangled each on each
10With knocks and friction, or in deadly pain
11Sheathing each other's splinters: till at last
12Without all stuff or shape they 're jetted up
13Where in the bluish moisture rot whate'er
14Was vomited in horror from the sea.
Publication Start Year
1905
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme