Main Street, Other Poems | Page 5

blind:?And it was grief that made Mankind your lover,?And it was grief that made you love Mankind.
III
Before Christ left the Citadel of Light,?To tread the dreadful way of human birth,?His shadow sometimes fell upon the earth?And those who saw it wept with joy and fright.?"Thou art Apollo, than the sun more bright!"?They cried. "Our music is of little worth,?But thrill our blood with thy creative mirth?Thou god of song, thou lord of lyric might!"
O singing pilgrim! who could love and follow?Your lover Christ, through even love's despair,?You knew within the cypress-darkened hollow?The feet that on the mountain are so fair.?For it was Christ that was your own Apollo,?And thorns were in the laurel on your hair.
Apology
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
For blows on the fort of evil?That never shows a breach,?For terrible life-long races?To a goal no foot can reach,?For reckless leaps into darkness?With hands outstretched to a star,?There is jubilation in Heaven?Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment?And delight in hopes that were vain.?Each poet is glad there was no cure?To stop his lonely pain.?For nothing keeps a poet?In his high singing mood?Like unappeasable hunger?For unattainable food.
So fools are glad of the folly?That made them weep and sing,?And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne?And Drummond for his king.?They know that on flinty sorrow?And failure and desire?The steel of their souls was hammered?To bring forth the lyric fire.
Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,?McDonough and Hunt and Pearse?See now why their hatred of tyrants?Was so insistently fierce.?Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp?To cheat a poet's eye??Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause?In which to sing and to die!
So not for the Rainbow taken?And the magical White Bird snared?The poets sing grateful carols?In the place to which they have fared;?But for their lifetime's passion,?The quest that was fruitless and long,?They chorus their loud thanksgiving?To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.
The Proud Poet
(For Shaemas O Sheel)
One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,?His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime. "Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroidery?" he said, "For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!" "You little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to Hell?For the idea you express I will not listen to:?I have trouble enough with poetry and poverty as well,?Without having to pay attention to orators like you.
"When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is woman's work You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land. There was Byron who left all his lady-loves to fight against the Turk, And David, the Singing King of the Jews,?who was born with a sword in his hand.?It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to the Wars and died, And Sir Philip Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet as his arm was strong; And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover meets his bride, Because he carried in his soul the courage of his song.
"And there is no consolation so quickening to the heart?As the warmth and whiteness that come from the lines of noble poetry. It is strong joy to read it when the wounds of the spirit smart, It puts the flame in a lonely breast where only ashes be.?It is strong joy to read it, and to make it is a thing?That exalts a man with a sacreder pride than any pride on earth. For it makes him kneel to a broken slave and set his foot on a king, And it shakes the walls of his little soul with the echo of God's mirth.
"There was the poet Homer had the sorrow to be blind,?Yet a hundred people with good eyes would listen to him all night; For they took great enjoyment in the heaven of his mind,?And were glad when the old blind poet let them share his powers of sight. And there was Heine lying on his mattress all day long,?He had no wealth, he had no friends, he had no joy at all, Except to pour his sorrow into little cups of song,?And the world finds in them the magic wine that his broken heart let fall.
"And these are only a couple of names from a list of a thousand score Who have put their glory on the world in poverty and pain. And the title of poet's a noble thing, worth living and dying for, Though all the devils on earth and in Hell spit at me their disdain. It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, Would be tortured another