Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 59: WEALTH (For Aline)

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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.

WEALTH
(For Aline)

From what old ballad, or from what rich frame

Did you descend to glorify the earth?

Was it from Chaucer’s singing book you came?

Or did Watteau’s small brushes give you birth?

Nothing so exquisite as that slight hand

Could Raphael or Leonardo trace.

Nor could the poets know in Fairyland

The changing wonder of your lyric face.

I would possess a host of lovely things,

But I am poor and such joys may not be.

So God who lifts the poor and humbles kings

Sent loveliness itself to dwell with me.