The Automobile Poem

Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills
   Billow on billow of umbrageous green
   Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen
One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills
And silver-rising storms and dewy stills
   Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine
   Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene
Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.

Then all of Nature’s old amazement seemed
   Sudden to ask us: “Is this also Man?
   This plunging, volant, land-amphibian
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?
   Reply!” And piercing us with ancient scan,
The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down — and screamed.