Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern.

Today I'm going to read to you a poem by Edna St. Vincent Malay. Malay was an American poet and a

playwright, and she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, and she was only the third woman to win the award for poetry.

So she was a prestigious poet in her lifetime. She lived from 1892 to 1950.

Today I'm going to read to you a poem called God's World.

Oh, world, I cannot hold thee close enough.

Thy winds, thy wide gray skies, thy mists that roll and rise,

thy woods this autumn day that ache and sag and all but cry with color,

that gaunt crag to crush,

to lift the lean of that black bluff,

world, world, I cannot get thee close enough.

Long have I known a glory in it all,

but never knew I this.

Here such a passion is as stretches me apart.

Lord, I do fear thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

My soul is all but out of me. Let fall no burning leaf, prithee, let no bird call.

I really love this poem.

Malay was known for her formal poetry.

It had a regular rhythm and rhyme.

She was a master of the sonnet.

In fact, Richard Wilbur said of her that she wrote some of the best sonnets of the century,

and that means a lot coming from such an accomplished poet as he was.

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