Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A FORGOTTEN BARD, by CLINTON SCOLLARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A FORGOTTEN BARD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In a dim nook beneath the street
Last Line: Some book of mine be housed and read?
Subject(s): Books; New York City; Poetry Readings; Reading; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple


In a dim nook beneath the street
Where Pine and noisy Nassau meet,
This little book of song I found
In scarred morocco quaintly bound.
Each musty and bemildewed leaf
Bespeaks long years of grime and grief;
Long years,—for on the title page
A dim date tells the volume's age.

Ah, who was he, the bard that sung
In that dead century's stately tongue
In those envanished days of yore?—
An empty name—I know no more!
Yet as I read will fancy form
A face whose glow is fresh and warm,
A frank, clear eye wherein I view
A nature open, genial, true.

Mayhap he dreamed of fame, but fate
Has barred to him that temple's gate;
He loved,—was loved,—for one divines
An answered passion in his lines;
He died, ah, yes, he died, but when
He ceased to walk the ways of men,
Or where his clay with mother clay
Commingles sweetly, who can say!

In pity will I give his book
A not too lonely study nook,
Where kindly gleams of light may play
Across it of a wintry day;
And I will take it down sometimes
To con the prim and polished rhymes.—
Will thus, when the grey years have fled,
Some book of mine be housed and read?





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