A SUGGESTION FROM HOGARTH ONE knows the scene so well, -- a touch, A word, brings back again That room, not garnished overmuch, In gusty Drury Lane; The empty safe, the child that cries, The kittens on the coat, The good-wife with her patient eyes, The milkmaid's tuneless throat; And last, in that mute woe sublime, The luckless verseman's air: The 'Bysshe,' the foolscap and the rhyme, -- The Rhyme ... that is not there! Poor Bard! to dream the verse inspired -- With dews Castalian wet -- Is built from cold abstractions squired By 'Bysshe,' his epithet! Ah! when she comes, the glad-eyed Muse, No step upon the stair Betrays the guest we can't refuse, -- She takes us unaware; And tips with fire our lyric lips, And sets our hearts aflame, And then, like Ariel, off she trips, And none knows how she came. Only, henceforth, for right or wrong, By some dull sense grown keen, Some blank hour blossomed into song, We feel that she has been. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MIDSUMMER NIGHT by SARA TEASDALE SIGNS OF THE TIMES by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR GASCOIGNE'S WOODMANSHIP by GEORGE GASCOIGNE A SEA DIALOGUE by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES BRIDAL BALLAD by EDGAR ALLAN POE CASSANDRA by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON WHEN by SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY |