Arctic Gentian

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Title:     Arctic Gentian
Author: Elizabeth Madox Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

Beyond the reach of the timberline,
The long trail lifting, lifting,
Past wizened gardens of low gaunt pine,
Crouching out of the great storm's path:
The last tree flees from the arctic wrath,
But on is the white trail lifting.

Cities and rivers and fields beseem
A fantasy, fading, fading,
Lost away in the myth of a dream:
And the wide land reaches beyond our eyes,
A Navajo carpet of strange soft dyes:
Patterned with cities the great web lies,
Woven with fantasies, fading.

Rolls in the tide and the cloud waves toss,
The reach of the long land merging:
Where the still white surges part and cross
The quivering vistas seem to be
Of a lost land under the waves of a sea.
O summit flower, what strange waves toss
Below in the long, long surging!

[The end]
Elizabeth Madox Roberts's poem: Arctic Gentian

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