With bamboo springing in a span   

To catch the leaves that I amass   

In bushels on the evening grass. 

I reckon how the wind behaves   

And rake them lightly into waves   

And rake the waves upon a pile,   

Then stop my raking for a while. 

The sun is down, the air is blue,   

And soon the fingers will be, too,   

But there are children to appease   

With ducking in those leafy seas. 

So loudly rummaging their bed 

On the dry billows of the dead, 

They are not warned at four and three   

Of natural mortality. 

Before their supper they require   

A dragon field of yellow fire 

To light and toast them in the gloom.   

So much for old earth’s ashen doom.

Robert Fitzgerald was born on October 12, 1910 in Geneva, New York, but spent most of his childhood in Springfield, Illinois. His entire family (mother, brother, and father) died before the age of seventeen. Despite his tragic childhood, he excelled academically and became a profound student at Harvard University in 1929, where he studied English and Greek. After college, he held jobs at The Herald Tribune and Time Magazine, where he debuted his first poem collection Arrows.  He also served during World War II in Guam and Pearl Harbor. After the war ended he taught English at well known universities such as Princeton, University of Notre Dame, and University of Washington. He married three times and has a total of three kids. Along with being a poet he was also well known for his translations, which included The Illiad and the Odyssey. Throughout his adulthood he became a professor at Harvard, and became the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets as well Poet Laureate in 1984-85. He received outstanding awards such as the Shelley Memorial Award, as well as grants from the National Endowment for Arts and Ford Foundation. He died on January 16, 1985 in Hamden, Conneticut

Harvard University where Fitzgerald attended in order to receive his BA in English and Greek

Fitzgerald teaching a class on literature at Harvard

Fitzgerald at the award ceremony after receiving the Harold Morton Translation Award

Fitzgerald's translated version of Homer's The Odyssey