One of the early-twentieth century Southern intellectuals and artists of the early twentieth century known as the Agrarians, Allen Tate wrote poetry that was rooted strongly in that region's past―in the land, the people, and the traditions of the American South as well as in the forms and concerns of the classic poets. In "Ode to the Confederate Dead"― generally recognized as his greatest poem―he delineates both the horror of the sight of rows of tombstones at a Confederate cemetery and the honor that such sacrifice embodies, resulting in "a masterpiece that could not be transcended" (William Pratt). “Allen Tate is the supreme classicist, the most convincingly grandiloquent orator, of his generation. The rhetoric of his monologues, analyzing the sublime decadence of the moral and political scene, is gloomy, scornful and yet icily aloof. The more philosophical poems tease the reader with ironies of existence and morality. Everywhere is an easy 17th-century formality, sureness with myth, and habit of cadence and judgment…. It is simply important to have Tate again in print, accessible to a couple of generations of readers who probably hardly know him.” ―John Fuller, on the hardcover publication of Collected Poems 1919-1976 in 1977 Allen Tate (1899-1979) was born in Winchester, Kentucky, and spent much of his adult life teaching first in the South, then in Minnesota. He is also the author of the novel The Fathers. Collected Poems 1919-1976 By Allen Tate Farrar, Straus and Giroux Copyright © 2007 Christopher Benfey All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-374-53095-2 Contents TITLE PAGE, COPYRIGHT NOTICE, DEDICATION, PREFACE, INTRODUCTION by Christopher Benfey, PART ONE, Death of Little Boys, Homily, Madness, Mr. Pope, To a Romantic, To a Romantic Novelist, Ditty, Idyl, Retroduction to American History, Causerie, Idiot, The Subway, Ode to the Confederate Dead, The Progress of ?nia, I MADRIGALE, II IN WINTERTIME, III VIGIL, IV DIVAGATION, V EPILOGUE TO ?NIA, Sonnet to Beauty, The Eagle, Historical Epitaphs, I ON THE FATHER OF LIBERTY, II ON THE GREAT CONCILIATOR, III ON THE FOUNDER OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES, IV ON THE MARTYR OF HARPERS FERRY, The Cross, Mother and Son, Emblems, Last Days of Alice, Message from Abroad, The Oath, The Twelve, The Paradigm, PART TWO, Sonnets of the Blood, The Wolves, The Anabasis, Brief Message, Inside and Outside, Ode to Fear, Records, I A DREAM, II A VISION, The Traveller, Unnatural Love, The Mediterranean, Aeneas at Washington, Aeneas at New York, The Ancestors, Shadow and Shade, The Meaning of Life, The Meaning of Death, Fragment of a Meditation, To the Romantic Traditionists, The Ivory Tower, To the Lacedemonians, Pastoral, Cold Pastoral, The Robber Bridegroom, Eclogue of the Liberal and the Poet, The Trout Map, PART THREE, Jubilo, Sonnets at Christmas, More Sonnets at Christmas, Ode to Our Young Pro-consuls of the Air, Winter Mask, Seasons of the Soul, I SUMMER, II AUTUMN, III WINTER, IV SPRING, The Eye, Two Conceits, The Maimed Man, The Swimmers, The Buried Lake, Sonnet, Farewell Rehearsed, PART FOUR Translations, The Vigil of Venus / Pervigilium Veneris, Farewell to Anactoria (Sappho), Adaptation of a Theme by Catullus, Correspondences (Baudelaire), A Carrion (Baudelaire), Sulpicia to Cerinthus (Tibullus), PART FIVE Early Poems, Red Stains, Battle of Murfreesboro (1862–1922), Bizarre, Bored to Choresis, Cul-de-Sac, Debt, Edges, Elegy, Elegy for Eugenesis, Euthanasia, Fair Cuirass Shattered, The Flapper, Hitch Your Wagon to a Star, Horatian Epode to the Duchess of Malfi, Intellectual Detachment, John Milton, Non Omnis Moriar, Nuptials, Parthenia, To a Prodigal Old Maid, Sinbad, Stranger, Suicide, These Deathy Leaves, True Believer, William Blake, Calidus Juventa?, Long Fingers, Lycambes Talks to John, Mary McDonald, Perimeters, Procession, Quality of Mercy, Reflections in an Old House, Resurgam, Tercets of the Triad, Vision Beatific, Art, A Pauper, Credo in Intellectum Videntem, Day, Dusk, Eager Youths to a Dead Girl, For a Dead Citizen, Light, Lityerses, APPENDIX, Ode aux Morts Confédérés, Ode ai Caduti Confederati, Notes, BY ALLEN TATE, COPYRIGHT, CHAPTER 1      Death of Little Boys     When little boys grown patient at last, weary,     Surrender their eyes immeasurably to the night,     The event will rage terrific as the sea;     Their bodies fill a crumbling room with light.     Then you will touch at the bedside, torn in two,     Gold curls now deftly intricate with gray     As the windowpane extends a fear to you     From one peeled aster drenched with the wind all day.     And over his chest the covers in the ultimate dream     Will mount to the teeth, ascend the eyes, press back     The locks—while round his sturdy belly gleam     Suspended breaths, white spars ab