THE POET.
Reading edition
Who is the Poet? Know him by
The downcast and abstracted eye;
By careless mien and lofty brow;
By tones so musically low;
By a pale cheek of spirit light,
Telling of hopes and visions bright;
By a deep communing with all
That earth can good or gentle call;
By silent reveries and lone
The Poet, God’s best work, is known.
Where dwells the Poet? Seek him where
Voices of music fill the air;
Where flowers in beauty meet the sun;
Where streams in gentle silence run;
Seek him beneath the forest tree,
Where bird and breeze meet whisperingly;
Seek him where thunder peals are heard;
Where the proud elements are stirred;
Where Nature shows her giant force,
And earth is troubled in its course.
Seek him where all that stirs the soul
Is independent of control;
Where torrents rush, and lightning gleams,
Till earth a fierce volcano seems;
Where the proud ocean, boiling o’er,
Lashes the weak and frightened shore;
Where Nature moves in awful might,
Or proudly smiles in living light;
Wherever earth hath might or bloom —
There is the Poet’s cherished home.
What is the Poet? One who hath
A lonely and a troubled path;
He walks through life as in a dream —
Among mankind, but not of them;
A strange anomaly of earth —
A compound of despair and mirth;
A proud, high spirit, strange and wild,
Yet gentle as a little child;
A being filled with love and hate —
Each powerful—a thing of fate!
Who are the Poet’s friends? Alas!
But few in human shape he has;
Yet Nature shrines a hoard for him,
Far in her sanctuary dim:
Forth, from the flowers and gentle streams,
For him a ray of friendship gleams;
The breeze that shakes the forest-tree,
For him hath love and sympathy;
The sunset cloud a radiance lends —
And wave and star to him are friends.
Who is the Poet’s worshiped love?
A being from the halls above;
A thing of ideal life and light,
Intensely beautiful and bright;
Embodying it in human form,
With passions redolent and warm —
But sees, upon a near survey,
The visionary pass away;
And finds, instead of hope’s ideal,
A being cold, and false, and real.
What is the Poet’s heritage,
In every clime, in every age?
While living, disappointment, doubt,
To wear his wasting spirit out;
To feel ambition’s haughty fire,
Yet doomed to see its light expire;
To struggle on, and toil for fame;
To bear with scorn, and want, and shame;
To hope, and find that he must die.
For him, is life’s sole certainty.
What is the Poet’s meed, when life
Has passed, with all its toil and strife?
A tardy justice to his name;
A place upon the scroll of fame;
A wreath of praise which must atone
For years of suffering dark and lone;
A guerdon valueless at last,
When he who would have prized has past
Far from the sound of man’s rank breath —
A victor over all—even Death!
When should the Poet die? At eve,
When dew-drops glisten on each leaf;
When stars come forth from their abode
Beneath the footstool of our God,
And linger on the holy sky;
Then should the earth-worn Poet die:
When all is still, and pure, and calm,
Beneath the twilight’s hallowed balm —
When flowers and stars unfold to pray —
The Poet’s soul should pass away.
Where should the Poet sleep, when death
Has chained his proud, aspiring breath?
For those who loved earth’s gentle bloom,
Within a quiet lonely tomb,
Afar the deep still woods among —
Beneath green shadows, where the song
Of bird, and bee, and breeze can fall,
Making it pure and sacred all;
Where flowers pour forth their latest sigh —
There should the lowly Poet lie.
The proud in heart should slumber where
Enters no sound of earthly air;
Silent, in some cathedral old,
Where shadows fall from each marble mould;
Where the colored radiance scarce can tell
Of the world he toiled for, long and well —
Where, side by side, the mighty dead
A hallowing spell from their proud tombs shed —
Where the kings of the earth to muse may come —
The Poet may find his last, long home.
What is the Poet’s future lot
When death has passed? Oh, question not!
Those who in virtue’s pathway trod
Have found a dwelling with their God;
Those who, like straying sheep, have erred,
And doubted His revealed word,
Their fate is in His power who tries
Each pilgrim underneath the skies;
And He who kept the Poet here
Will bless him in a holier sphere.