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Summer Afternoons and Hypnosis, Robert Penn Warren [1]

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Date: 2023-01-05  

Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia

SUMMER AFTERNOONS AND HYPNOSIS by Robert Penn Warren

Lulled by stream-murmur and the afternoon's hypnosis

Of summer, guarded by willow shade while the sun

Westward inclines, you lie. The far world's only voice is

The muted music of sheep bells, one by one,

Threading the infinite distance of sunlight and languor.

Yes, lulled thus, your life achieves its honesty,

In which love, hate, lust, courage, cowardice, and anger,

With truth at last from lies torn, emerge from the shadowy

Mist of Time and sequence seek in Timelessness

Each its lonely and naked reality, and your heart,

Bemused as though in a mirror's icy duress,

Seems to suspend its stroke, and your dry lips part

In a whisper of slow appallment to ask, "Was this

The life that all those years I lived, and did not know?"

Do you really think now the sun frozen motionless?

Do you really think the stream no longer can flow?

But the heart again strikes, and the world resumes its nature,

And Time swirls back in a tide more sousing than Fundy,

And what man has endured he can endure,

And the shadow of that tall pine names night, and by

The moment it touches that mossed stone yonder,

you will have roused

Yourself to yourself, and set foot to the mile

That leads to the roof whereunder you find enhoused

The mystery of love's redeeming smile.

©August 18, 1980, New Yorker Magazine

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