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Nameless

William Montgomerie

Its light is in the grass,
Its yearning in the white gull’s cry
And in the geese that pass
In a long wavering line across the sky.

I listen, and it dreams
In silence, and it has no name;
The life of light it seems,
And all thing burn with it, as with a flame.

Rabbits on a dune
Erect, with long translucent ears,
Know the eternal tune,
And trees pulse with the wisdom of the years.

All the flying birds
Know it, and have no need to learn;
They teach us without words,
And ask from us no knowledge in return.


William Montgomerie

from Via: poems (London: Boriswood, 1933)

Reproduced by permission of the author’s Estate.

Tags:

light listening nature traces
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William Montgomerie1904 - 1994

William Montgomerie was a scholarly folklorist and bibliographer of the ballads of Scotland, whose own poetic output covered half a century of publication.
More about William Montgomerie

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