Carmel Highlands

By Janet Loxley Lewis 1899–1998
Below the gardens and the darkening pines
The living water sinks among the stones,
Sinking yet foaming till the snowy tones
Merge with the fog drawn landward in dim lines.
The cloud dissolves among the flowering vines,
And now the definite mountain-side disowns
The fluid world, the immeasurable zones.
Then white oblivion swallows all designs.

But still the rich confusion of the sea,
Unceasing voice, sombre and solacing,
Rises through veils of silence past the trees;
In restless repetition bound, yet free,
Wave after wave in deluge fresh releasing
An ancient speech, hushed in tremendous ease.

"Carmel Highlands" from The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis edited by R.L. Barth. Published in 2000 by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio (www.ohioswallow.com).

Source: Poetry (January 1938).

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This poem originally appeared in the January 1938 issue of Poetry magazine

January 1938
 Janet Loxley Lewis

Biography

"Being a writer has meant nearly everything to me beyond my marriage and children," says Janet Lewis in Women Writers of the West Coast: Speaking of Their Lives and Careers. Lewis, whose father and husband both taught college-level English, credits her father "with being the first to teach her the rudiments of good prose and poetic style," according to Donald E. Stanford in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook. "[Her] . . .

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Poems by Janet Loxley Lewis

Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams

Poetic Terms Sonnet

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