Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest:

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit:
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute:
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849]

PROEM

(WRITTEN TO INTRODUCE THE FIRST GENERAL COLLECTION OF HIS POEMS)

I LOVE the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spenser's golden days,

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours

To breathe their marvellous notes I try;

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,

And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme

Beat often Labor's hurried time,

Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,

Or softer shades of Nature's face,

I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seer-like power to show

The secrets of the heart and mind;

To drop the plummet-line below

Our common world of joy and woe,

A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.

Yet here at least an earnest sense

Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,

As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.

O Freedom! if to me belong

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,

Still with a love as deep and strong

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!

John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892

EMBRYO

I FEEL a poem in my heart to-night,
A still thing growing,-

As if the darkness to the outer light
A song were owing:

A something strangely vague, and sweet, and sad,

Fair, fragile, slender;

Not tearful, yet not daring to be glad,
And oh, so tender!

It may not reach the outer world at all,
Despite its growing;

Upon a poem-bud such cold winds fall

To blight its blowing.

But, oh, whatever may the thing betide,
Free life or fetter,

My heart, just to have held it till it died,
Will be the better!

Mary Ashley Townsend [1832-1901]

THE SINGER'S PRELUDE

From "The Earthly Paradise"

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.

But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,

Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,— Remember me a little then, I pray,

The idle singer of an empty day.

The heavy trouble, the bewildering care

That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;

So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate

To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

Folk say, a wizard to a northern king

At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.

So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,

Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;

Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.

William Morris [1834-1896]

A PRELUDE

SPIRIT that moves the sap in spring,
When lusty male birds fight and sing,
Inform my words, and make my lines
As sweet as flowers, as strong as vines.

Let mine be the freshening power
Of rain on grass, of dew on flower;
The fertilizing song be mine,
Nut-flavored, racy, keen as wine.

Let some procreant truth exhale
From me, before my forces fail;
Or ere the ecstatic impulse go,
Let all my buds to blossoms blow.

If quick, sound seed be wanting where
The virgin soil feels sun and air,

And longs to fill a higher state,
There let my meanings germinate.

Let not my strength be spilled for naught,
But, in some fresher vessel caught,

Be blended into sweeter forms,

And fraught with purer aims and charms.

Let bloom-dust of my life be blown
To quicken hearts that flower alone;
Around my knees let scions rise
With heavenward-pointed destinies.

And when I fall, like some old tree,
And subtile change makes mould of me,

There let earth show a fertile line

Whence perfect wild-flowers leap and shine!

Maurice Thompson [1844-1901]

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats [1795-1821]