Vision
by E.E. Cummings
[published in The Harvard Monthly, November 1911]

The dim deep of a yellow evening slides
Across the green, and mingles with the elms.
A faint beam totters feebly in the west,
Trembles, and all the earth is wild with light,
Stumbles, and all the world is in the dark.

The huge black sleep above;—lo, two white stars.

Harvard, your shadow-walls, and ghost-toned tower,
Dim, ancient-moulded, vague, and faint, and far,
Is gone!  And through the flesh I see the soul:
Colouring iron in red leaping flame,
The thunder-strokes of mighty, sweating men,
Furious hammers clashing fierce and high,—
And in a corner of the smithy coiled,
Black, brutal, massive-linked, the toil-wrought chain
Which is to bind God's right hand to the world.



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