Poem in Prose,Archibald MacLeish Modernist poet and triple Pulitzer Prize winner Archibald MacLeish was born May 7th 1892 in Glencoe, Illinois. His Glasgow-born father Andrew was a merchant and his mother Martha, who could trace her family back to the Mayflower, was a college professor. MacLeish was educated at Yale, where he began his writing career with the Yale Literary Magazine and he won a prize for his sonnet sequence Songs for a Summer’s Day.
Poem in Prose by Archibald MacLeish
This poem is for my wife.
I have made it plainly and honestly:
The mark is on it
Like the burl on the knife.
I have not made it for praise.
She has no more need for praise
Than summer has
Or the bright days.
In all that becomes a woman
Her words and her ways are beautiful:
Love’s lovely duty,
the well-swept room.
Wherever she is there is sun
And time and a sweet air:
Peace is there,
Work done.
There are always curtains and flowers
And candles and baked bread
And a cloth spread
And a clean house.
Her voice when she sings is a voice
At dawn by a freshening spring
Where the wave leaps in the wind
And rejoices.
Wherever she is it is now.
It is here where the apples are:
Here in the stars,
In the quick hour.
The greatest and richest good,
My own life to live in,
This she has given me —
If giver could.
