Sometimes, when winding slow by brook and bower, Beating the idle grass,--of what avail, I ask, are these dim fancies, cares and fears? What though from every bank I drew a flower,-- Bloodroot, king orchis, or the pearlwort pale,-- And set it in my verse with thoughtful tears? What would it count though I should sing my death And muse and mourn with as poetic breath As in damp garden walks the autumn gale Sighs o'er the fallen floriage? What avail Is the swan's voice if all the hearers fail? Or his great flight that no eye gathereth In the blending blue? And yet depending so, God were not God, whom knowledge cannot know. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MORNING HYMN by CHARLES WESLEY THE DISMANTLED SHIP by WALT WHITMAN THE CAUTIOUS HOUSEHOLDER by ANAXILAS THE TRAGIC MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS: 1 by KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY FIRST SIGHT by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH SONG AND SINGER by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |