The Greatest Thing In North America
Delmore Schwartz
This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
Changing, second by second, shifting and changing the
light,
Bring fresh rain to the stone of the library steps.
Under the famous names upon the pediment:
Thales, Aristotle,
Cicero, Augustine, Scotus, Galileo,
Joseph, Odysseus, Hamlet, Columbus and Spinoza,
Anna Karenina, Alyosha Karamazov, Sherlock Holmes.
And the last three also live upon the silver screen
Three blocks away, in moonlight’s artificial day,
A double bill in the darkened palace whirled,
And the veritable glittering light of the turning world’s
Burning mind and blazing imagination, showing, day by
day
And week after week the desires of the heart and mind
Of all the living souls yearning everywhere
From Canada to Panama, from Brooklyn to Paraguay,
From Cuba to Vancouver, every afternoon and every night.
Next 10 Poems
- Delmore Schwartz : The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
- Delmore Schwartz : The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel
- Delmore Schwartz : The Poet
- Delmore Schwartz : The Sin Of Hamlet
- Delmore Schwartz : The Spring
- Delmore Schwartz : This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn
- Delmore Schwartz : Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
- Delmore Schwartz : To Helen
- Delmore Schwartz : Two Lyrics From Kilroy's Carnival: A Masque
- Delmore Schwartz : What Curious Dresses All Men Wear
Previous 10 Poems
- Delmore Schwartz : The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain
- Delmore Schwartz : The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence
- Delmore Schwartz : The Beautiful American Word, Sure
- Delmore Schwartz : The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
- Delmore Schwartz : The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
- Delmore Schwartz : Spiders
- Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard Yard
- Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet: O City, City
- Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al.
- Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experiences
