Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into the heart of American aristocracy, the Jones family, when to be considered fashionable, one had to “keep up with the Joneses.” Because her mother forbade the reading of novels, the precocious Miss Jones began her literary career in poetry>. At fifteen, she was paid $50 for a translation of a German poem.
The house Edith Wharton built in Lenox, The Mount, remains central to cultural tourism in the Berkshires and is the site of literary and arts-centric activities throughout the year. More soon…
Poetry by Edith Wharton
Life
Life, like a marble block, is given to all,
A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,
Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays
Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;
One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;
One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,
And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia’s gaze,
Carves it apace in toys fantastical.
But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian’s perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That the night cometh wherein none shall see.
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