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,

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.

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