Collected Poems

To a Hero-Worshipper

To a Hero-Worshipper - I

My life is then a wasted ereme,
    My song but idle wind
    Because you merely find
In all this woven wealth of rhyme
Harsh figures with harsh music wound,
The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,
A ruby carcanet of sound,
    A cloud of lovely words?

I am, you say, no magic rod,
    No cry oracular,
    No swart and ominous star,
No Sinai thunder voicing God.
I have no burden to my song,
No smouldering word instinct with fire,
No spell to chase triumphant wrong,
    No spirit-sweet desire.

Mine is not Byron's lightning spear,
    Nor Wordsworth's lucid strain
    Nor Shelley's lyric pain,
Nor Keats', the poet without peer.
I by the Indian waters vast
Did glimpse the magic of the past,
And on the oaten pipe I play
Warped echoes of an earlier day.

To a Hero-Worshipper - II

My friend, when first my spirit woke,
    I trod the scented maze
    Of Fancy's myriad ways,

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I studied Nature like a book
Men rack for meanings: yet I find
No rubric in the scarlet rose,
No moral in the murmuring wind,
    No message in the snows.

For me the daisy shines a star,
    The crocus flames a spire,
    A horn of golden fire,
Narcissus glows a silver bar:
Cowslips, the golden breath of God,
I deem the poet's heritage,
And lilies silvering the sod
    Breathe fragrance from his page.

No herald of the sun am I
    But in a moonlit vale
    A russet nightingale
Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,
Who pours like wine a gurgling note
Paining with sound his swarthy throat,
Who pours sweet song he recks not why
Nor hushes ever lest he die.