“Touch him ne’er so lightly, into song he broke:

Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed,

Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke

Vitalizing Virtue: song would song succeed

Sudden as spontaneous—prove a poet-soul!”

Indeed?

Rock’s the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare:

Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage

Vainly both expend,—few flowers awaken there:

Quiet in its cleft broods—what the after age