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Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 105: BEAUTY’S HAIR

By Joyce Kilmer

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American Literature Biographies Essays, Letters & Speeches Poetry

About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

BEAUTY’S HAIR

A gleam of light across the night,

I know that you are there;

The heavens show the lovely glow

Of your transcendent hair,

Your luminous, miraculous, and morning-coloured hair.

I’ll take my silver javelin

And point it with a star,

For I have vowed to climb a cloud

And reach to where you are.

My javelin’s barb shall pierce your hair

And pin it to the sky,

And I will run to the island sun

Where captive you will lie,

And then I shall dare to touch your hair,

To steal a tress of your magic hair,

And bring to the world a tress of hair

And win the world thereby.

Or shall I put on a green-sea cloak

With sunset laces trimmed,

And shine so gay that the dawn will say

That her radiance is dimmed?

There never was a lover could shine more fair

Than I in my cloak will shine;

And all for the sake of your merry hair,

Your whimsical, perilous, golden hair,

Your lovely, terrible, golden hair,

More sweet than love or wine.

A twisted bit of silver

Fell down and bruised my face.

What was it broke my broidered cloak

And tore the sunset lace?

I must be clad in sorrow

Because you are so gay,

And close my eyes if I would see

A whiter light than day.

So lofty is your golden hair,

I cannot climb to touch your hair,

I must kneel down to find your hair

Upon the trampled way.