Published by

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown, CT 06459

      Copyright © 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963 by James Wright

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      20 19 18

      ISBN 0–8195–1018–1

      For permission to reprint some of these poems, the author wishes to make due acknowledgment to the editors of the following: The Fifties, The Sixties, The Minnesota Review, Big Table, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Audience, Botteghe Oscure, Poetry (Chicago), The Kenyon Review, The New York Times (daily), The Nation, Chicago Choice, and The Hudson Review. The poem “By a Lake in Minnesota” appeared originally in The New Yorker.

      I am also grateful to three particular friends: Miss Mary Bly, for her self and for the poem which bears her name; Heinrich Heine, for his beautiful song “Aus alten Märchen winkt es”; and Allen Tate, for his friendship in a difficult time.

       Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      Wright, James Arlington, 1927–

      The branch will not break; poems. [1st ed.] Middletown,

      Conn., Wesleyan University Press [1963]

      59 p. 21 cm.

      1. Title.

      PS3545.R58B7 811.54 63–8858

      Library of Congress [3]

       ELEUTHERIA