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July 25, 2021

Earth Evanescent

Maxwell Anderson

If other planets dark as earth
About dim trembling stars
Carry frail freight of death and birth,
Wild love, and endless wars;

If from far, unseen motes in flight
Life look down questioning
This helpless passage through the night
Is a less lonely thing:

But if unchained through empty space
Drift only shell and fire
What seeks the beauty of this face,
What end has its desire?

A candle in a night of storms,
Blown back and choked with rain,
Holds longer than the mounting forms
That ride time’s hurricane.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 25, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Earth Evanescent” appeared in You Who Have Dreams (Simon & Schuster, 1925).

Maxwell Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania. The recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his play, Both Your Houses, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Winterset and High Tor, Anderson founded the Playwrights’ Producing Company in 1938. He died in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1959.

You Who Have Dreams
(Simon & Schuster, 1925)

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Thanks to R. Erica Doyle, author of proxy (Belladonna Books, 2013), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Watch a Q&A about Doyle’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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Poem-a-Day - "Earth Evanescent" by Maxwell Anderson

Earth Evanescent

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