THE POET AND THE WORLD

A poet came in a golden noon,
His eyes were bright and his soul in tune,
And he sang a song of a nameless bird.
And never a song of songs was sung,
As sweet and as rich as the lay that sprung,
From the forest-wild muse in the lyrical verd.
An old man dozing and dying alone,
Hath startled enrapt at the wondrous tone,
And thinks on his own youth's minstrelsy.
And his fingers tremble and itch again
And his tongue is lashed in its bed of pain,
To know at last such music may be.
A youth starts up, with his soul on fire,
And shatters his harp for something higher,
And sings of a glory he has not known,
Till his mad soul sinks on the raging sea,
As sad and as weary as spent wings be,
In the guideless paths where his hopes have flown.
And a maiden adream in her virgin bower,
Of her love's bright star and its rising hour,
Hath heard the song, and her being is folden
To the starry breast of a winged god,
In the golden paths of a garden untrod,
Which her soul in the lyric depths beholden.
But the world hath roused on its listless bed
And calls to the ass for his bray instead,
And lo! he hath named the song and the bird!
And the young man lives, and the old man dies,
And the god hath flown from the maiden's eyes,
And the singer is gone, and the song is a word.

THE GUERDON

Sculptors have carved for us stories in stone,—
Spirits of gods from the chrysalis freeing;
Toiled for us, starved for us, dying unknown,
Still have they sought for the infinite being,
Calling it Beauty,—upbuilding its throne.
And this is the guerdon each bears to his tomb:
"Fortune is fickle, the saddest and gladdest
"Slumber as long as the meanest and maddest—
"Naught hast thou wraught so enduring as doom."
Painters have drawn for us marvellous lines,
Hues of the rainbow, and sunset, and morning—
Pigments an innermost glory divines,
Laurelled, or stultified canvas adorning;
Toiled for us, drunk for us bitterest wines,
And this is the guerdon each bears to his tomb:
"Fortune is fickle—the saddest and gladdest
"Slumber as long as the meanest and maddest
"Naught hast thou drawn so enduring as doom."
Poets have sung for us sweetest of song,
Aye, they have sung for us, limn'd for us, carved for us.
Laurell'd our fortune, and lightened our wrong—
Still have they dreamed for us, toiled for us, starved for us—
We are their passion's most fanciful throng—
And this is the guerdon each bears to his tomb:
"Fortune is fickle—the saddest, and gladdest,
"Slumber as long as the meanest and maddest,
"Naught hast thou sung so enduring as doom."

A SONG

What is so rare as a pearly cloud,
With a burning sun behind it?
And this is the jewel I wear on my heart,
With a dream to bind it—
This is the treasure you sought from the start,
Forgetting to find it.
What is so sweet as the song of a bird,
That wakens the fancy that hears it?
And this is the music I hear in my heart
Whose heaven enspheres it—
This is the heaven you sought from the start
Forgetting to pierce it.
What is so glad as the heart of a child,
That gambols as careless as Maytime?
And this is the pleasure I hold to my heart,
Acalling it daytime—
This is the pleasure you sought from the start,
Forgetting the playtime.