My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream, Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming, Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam. I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices From peak snow-diademed to regal star; Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices, The pregnant voices of the Things That Are. The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; The gold-delirium, the ferine strife; The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life. The nameless men who nameless rivers travel, And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone; The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone. These will I sing, and if one of you linger Over my pages in the Long, Long Night, And on some lone line lay a calloused finger, Saying: "It's human-true -- it hits me right"; Then will I count this loving toil well spent; Then will I dream awhile -- content, content. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CACOETHES SCRIBENDI by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES TO THE ONE OF FICTIVE MUSIC by WALLACE STEVENS GREAT FRIEND by HENRY DAVID THOREAU EYE-SHAPED, MOUTH-SHAPED by MARGARET AHO THE LAST LOOK O' HAME by HEW AINSLIE |