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Rh THE RED COUNTRY

BY WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT

the red country

The sky flowers

All day.

Strange mechanical birds

With struts of wire and glazed wings

Cross the impassive sky

Which burgeons ever and again

With ephemeral unfolding flowers,

White and yellow and brown,

That spread and dissolve.

And smaller rapid droning birds go by,

And bright metallic bees whose sting is death.

Behind the hills,

Behind the whispering woods whose leaves are falling

Yellow and red to cover the red clay,

Misshapen monsters squat with wide black maws

Gulping smoke and belching flame.

From the mirk reed beds of the age of coal,

Wallowing out of their sleep in the earlier slime,

They are resurrected and stagger forth to slay—

The prehistoric Beasts we thought were dead.

They are blinded with long sleep,

But men with clever weapons