The bards falter in shame, their running verse Stumbles, with marrow-bones the drunken diners Pelt them for their delay. It is a something fearful in the song Plagues them—an unknown grief that like a churl Goes common-place in cowskin And bursts unheralded, crowing and coughing, An unpilled holly-club twirled in his hand, Into their many-shielded, samite-curtained, Jewel-bright hall where twelve kings sit at chess Over the white-bronze pieces and the gold; And by a gross enchantment Flails down the rafters and leads off the queens— The wild-swan-breasted, the rose-ruddy-cheeked, Raven-haired daughters of their admiration— To stir his black pots and to bed on straw. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DAY AND THE WORK by EDWIN MARKHAM THE ITINERANT POET'S ROAD SONG by KAREN SWENSON THE TREE OF SONG by SARA TEASDALE RESCUE by JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER WHAT I LIVE FOR by GEORGE LINNAEUS BANKS LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF ALEXANDER DUMAS by GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT |