NAY, blame me not; I might have spared Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, "Those ruder songs Had freshness which the new have lost; To spring the opening leaf belongs, The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown, When these I write -- ah, well-a-day! The autumn thistle's silvery down Is not the purple bloom of May! Go, little book, whose pages hold Those garnered years in loving trust; How long before your blue and gold Shall fade and whiten in the dust? O sexton of the alcoved tomb, Where souls in leathern cerements lie, Tell me each living poet's doom! How long before his book shall die? It matters little, soon or late, A day, a month, a year, an age, -- I read oblivion in its date, And Finis on its title-page. Before we sighed, our griefs were told; Before we smiled, our joys were sung; And all our passions shaped of old In accents lost to mortal tongue. In vain a fresher mould we seek, -- Can all the varied phrases tell That Babel's wandering children speak How thrushes sing or lilacs smell? Caged in the poet's lonely heart, Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone; The soul that sings must dwell apart, Its inward melodies unknown. Deal gently with us, ye who read! Our largest hope is unfulfilled, -- The promise still outruns the deed, -- The tower, but not the spire, we build. Our whitest pearl we never find; Our ripest fruit we never reach; The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech. These are my blossoms; if they wear One streak of morn or evening's glow, Accept them; but to me more fair The buds of song that never blow. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PRAISE FOR AN URN; IN MEMORIAM: ERNEST NELSON by HAROLD HART CRANE RELIEVING GUARD by FRANCIS BRET HARTE SONNET: 10 by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY NAMELESS PAIN by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AN EXPOSTULATION WITH A SECTARIST, WHO INVEIGHED AGAINST THE CLERGY by JOHN BYROM OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 26. ELEGIAC VERSE: THE NINETH EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION HERE AND NOW by CATHERINE CATER |