If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear, To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping? To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping My songs forgone against my face and hair? Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear, My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping? No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping, And I shall die a poet unaware. From me, my art, thou canst not pass away; And I, a singer though I cease to sing, Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe. Through my indifferent words of every day, Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring And make my poem; and I shall not know. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DANIEL WEBSTER by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOW CYRUS LAID THE CABLE [JULY 29, 1866] by JOHN GODFREY SAXE STEADFASTNESS; THE LOVER BESEECHETH HIS MISTRESS by THOMAS WYATT ALARIC AT ROME by MATTHEW ARNOLD A FRAGMENT OF AN EPIC POEM, OCCASIONED BY THE LOSS OF A GAME by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE CEREMONY OF THE PRINTER'S APPRENTICE; A GERMAN MORALITY PLAY by WILLAM BLADES |