-05_To a Hero Worshipper.htm

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.

                          II

My friend, when first my spirit woke, 

      I trod the scented maze                                             
      Of Fancy’s myriad ways,
I studied Nature like a book

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        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 moon-lit veil
        A russet nightingale
Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,

        Who pours like a wine a gurgling note
        Paining with sound his swarthy throat,

Who pours sweet song, he recks not why,

Nor hushes ever lest he die.
                    

Estelle

        Why do thy lucid eyes survey,
Estelle, their sisters in the milky way?
        The blue heavens cannot see
        Thy beauty nor the planets praise.
Blindly they walk their old accustomed ways.
        Turn hither for felicity.
        My body’s earth thy vernal power declares,
        My spirit is a heaven of thousand stars,
And all these lights are thine and open doors on thee.

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