THE greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old. Still young enough to be a part Of Nature's great impulsive heart, Born comrade of bird, beast and tree And unselfconscious as the bee -- And yet with lovely reason skilled Each day new paradise to build; Elate explorer of each sense, Without dismay, without pretence! In your unstained transparent eyes There is no conscience, no surprise: Life's queer conundrums you accept, Your strange divinity still kept. Being, that now absorbs you, all Harmonious, unit, integral, Will shred into perplexing bits, -- Oh, contradictions of the wits! And Life, that sets all things in rhyme, May make you poet, too, in time -- But there were days, O tender elf, When you were Poetry itself! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CATS' MONTH by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE; OR, THE EMIGRANT'S ADIEU TO HIS BIRTHPLACE by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM WINTER NIGHT by CH'IEN WEN OF LIANG FUCHSIA HEDGES IN CONNACHT by PADRAIC COLUM TO MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT (ON HER BIRTHDAY, 1723) by ALEXANDER POPE ESTRANGEMENT by WILLIAM WATSON |