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        Things Of This World


        setting

        time

        language

        English

        region

        year published

        1956

        page count

        difficulty

        Intermediate

        main characters

        Rip's impressions

        first line

        awards

        Pulitzer

        literary tidbits

        The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
        And spirited from sleep, the astounded
        soul
        Hangs for a moment bodiless and
        simple
        As false dawn.
        Outside the open window
        The morning air is all awash with
        angels.

        Some are in bed-sheets, some are
        in blouses,
        Some are in smocks: but truly there
        they are.
        Now they are rising together in calm
        swells
        Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they
        wear
        With the deep joy of their impersonal
        breathing;

        Now they are flying in place,
        conveying
        The terrible speed of their
        omnipresence, moving
        And staying like white water; and now
        of a sudden
        They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
        That nobody seems to be there.
        The soul shrinks

        From all that it is about to remember,
        From the punctual rape of every
        blessed day,
        And cries,
        "Oh, let there be nothing on
        earth but laundry,
        Nothing but rosy hands in the rising
        steam
        And clear dances done in the sight of
        heaven."

        Yet, as the sun acknowledges
        With a warm look the world's hunks
        and colors,
        The soul descends once more in bitter
        love
        To accept the waking body, saying now
        In a changed voice as the man yawns
        and rises,

        "Bring them down from their ruddy
        gallows;
        Let there be clean linen for the backs
        of thieves;
        Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be
        undone,
        And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure
        floating
        Of dark habits,
        keeping their difficult
        balance."