I WOULD not venture to dispraise or praise.
Too well I know the indifference which bounds
A poet in the narrow working-grounds
Where he is blind and deaf in all his ways.
He must work out alone his path to glory;
A thousand breaths are fanning him along;
A thousand tears end in one little song,
A thousand conflicts in one little story;
A thousand notes swell to a single chord.
He cannot tell where his direction tends;
He strives unguided towards indefinite ends;
He is an ignorant though absolute lord.
NOMADS
FROM the shores of the Atlantic to the gardens of
Japan,
From the darkness of the Neva to the courts of
Ispahan,
There is nothing that can hold us, hold our wandering
caravan.
Leisurely is our encamping; nowhere pause in hasty
flight.
Long enough to learn the secret, and the value, and
the might,
Whether of the northern mountains or the southern
lands of light.
And the riches of the regions will be ours from land to
land,
Falling as a wiling booty under our marauding
hand,
Rugs from Persia, gods from China, emeralds from
Samarcand!
And the old forgotten empires, which have faded turn
by turn,
From the shades emerging slowly to their ancient sway
return,
And to their imperial manhood rise the ashes from
the urn.
We have known Bzyantium's glory when the eagled
flag was flown,
When the ruins were not ruins; eagled visions have
I known
Of a spectral Roman emperor seated on a spectral
throne.
We have tasted space and freedom, frontiers falling as
we went,
Now with narrow bonds and limits never could we be
content,
For we have abolished boundaries, straitened borders
have we rent,
And a house no more confines us than the roving
nomad's tent.