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EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY

Poet Analysis

First Line: WHAT WAS THE SERVICE OF THIS POET? HE
Last Line: WHO KNEW SO LITTLE, AND WHO FELT SO MUCH.
Subject(s): EPITAPHS; POETRY & POETS;
"It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid." -- Robert Louis
Stevenson.

WHAT was the service of this poet? He
Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run
Where life profiles its edges to the sun,
And still suspected much he could not see.
Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity
There lay the vein of glory, known to none;
And moods of secret smiling, only won
When peace and passion, time and sense, agree.

Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood,
Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid
His loves that held him in their vital clutch --
This was his service, his beatitude;
This was the inward trouble he enjoyed
Who knew so little, and who felt so much.



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