Geoffrey Johnson

ON A SUN-DIAL Take out the gnomon from the dial; spurn The haunting index of the self from mind, And back in timeless gardens you shall learn That shadows where you grieved were self-designed. It is the rigid rod of self, the lean Impending skeleton [...]

Two elms there were, and one in April met Dethronement from uprooting gales, But missed the bottom of abasement yet, Though felled in flush of pollen: ruin pales Before this transformation of July; For sawn in cylinders of bleaching wood Like a proud [...]

IN A GARDEN Here, where iris blades are fine, Blazed the swords of Antonine— They are bits of greenish bronze, Stiller than the plaques of leaves Hanging from plum-covered eaves When noon is quiet as a bonze. . . . A gap in thi [...]

ANIMALS They know, they know, the animals. Without or questions or replies, Mystics of undeliverable words, They keep their dumbness and arc wise; And shyly sleek and archly meek, They smile from corners of their eyes; Hugging that only truth they kn [...]

At foggy dawn when all the ghostly lamps Were ringed with yellow films, the waggoner went And breathed from open roads a large content And drank deep solace from the frosty damps; And whistled with the perilous joy to feel The grip of reins that [...]