from “On Freedom’s Ground”
Back then, before we came
To this calm bay and savage oceanside,
When Bedloes Island had no English name,
The waves were but the subjects of the tide
And vassals of the harnessed wind, which blew
Not as it chose, but as it had to do.
Prize winner, 1957 & 1989
Born in New York City on March 1, 1921, Richard Wilbur studied at Amherst College before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He later attended Harvard University. His first book of poems, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems was published in 1947, and he went on to write several more volumes over the next five decades, including two Pulitzer Prize winners: Things of This World (1956) and New and Collected Poems (1988). Among his honors are the Wallace Stevens Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Frost Medal, the T. S. Eliot Award, a Ford Foundation Award and two Guggenheim Fellowships. He was elected a chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. Wilbur served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1961 to 1995. He currently lives in Cummington, Massachusetts.
Excerpted from poetryfoundation.org