North Maple Rag

This poem from Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers has been floating around in my head all weekend. I don't really know a lot about poetry, and it's rare that lines from poems pop into my head. In fact, the only other time I can remember this happening is after I did a rather extensive group project in the eighth grade about Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

Anyway, I've read the Sayers poem many, many times and I always notice something different (today, I'm caught on "if thou spare to smite"). It's not the best poem I've ever read, but I like it a lot. Also, when I did a google search for it, I only found it in its entirety in one place. So, I'm posting it here, just in case someone else finds themselves trying to remember all the words.

Here then at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone of dizzying circles hurled
To that still center where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for if thou spare to smite,
Staggering we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.