Poem: Liberty Hyde Bailey 'Goods'

Another poem from a long-lost volume of poetry
by Liberty Hyde Bailey (See issue #29 for another of Bailey’s poems.)

GOODS

I sat at midnight in the woods

When the darks were far and deep,

When all my kin had housed their goods

And had fallen dead asleep.

A whisper moved above my ears

As if slender rain-drops fell, –

A feeling of a thousand years

From the whence I could not tell.

A something stirs within those woods

A spirit remote and fine, –

And all my kin may have their goods

For the deep old glooms are mine.

(from LH Bailey Wind and Weather, originally published 1916,
reprint forthcoming Oct. 2008 from Doulos Christou Press).

C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com