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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The Needle

Ezra Pound

Come, or the stellar tide will slip away.
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!

Here we have had our vantage, the good hour.
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.
Come now, before this power
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole.

Mock not the flood of stars, the thing’s to be.
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly.
The waves bore in, soon they bear away.

The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it.
Move we and take the tide, with its next favour,
Abide
Under some neutral force
Until this course turneth aside.
Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Ripostes | 1912
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