PASSION and Strength! Strength, Passion! Men who yearn Are not men who achieve. The poet's fierce fire Has too frail stuff to feed on; it must burn In brief, unheating blazes or expire. Passion and Strength! Could my uneasy heart Possess yon lumbering clod-of-earth, my gall, Breed insolence in his great bulk, what art, What social revolutions, might befall? Could that which takes hot life from me this hour Forsake the fuel it gnaws upon and then From this soft sap-wood generate new power, Heaven help this silly world of gods and men! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RETROSPECT by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE FOUR BROTHERS by CARL SANDBURG THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE TREE by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT A DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING by JONATHAN SWIFT SONGS OF LABOR: DEDICATION by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |