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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
Page-8
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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– 9
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