These bitter stammered rhymes, Tuneless so many times, And always rent and torn, What have they they can plead At the bar of the critic-breed, That to life they should be born? Nothing but this, that they, In their own drifting way, Express the soul that bred 'em. And it is something if verse, For many a priest does worse, Takes a man and his style to wed 'em. In every child of earth There runs thro' his head from birth A broken stammered tune, The fairy-tale of his days; And 'tis much, if, with little to praise, He can mutter this to the moon. For the little things he spied at, And the little things he cried at, Take a far-flung wistful gleam, And seem as they drift on the mood Of his verse, however crude, To belong to the infinite stream. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...GOD by GABRIEL ROMANOVITCH DERZHAVIN FOOLIN' WID DE SEASONS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR FORERUNNERS by RALPH WALDO EMERSON SEA UNICORNS AND LAND UNICORNS by MARIANNE MOORE IN THE BELFRY OF THE NIEUWE KERK by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE SAILOR; A ROMAIC BALLAD by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM |