Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ETERNAL ADVENTURE: BOOK 3, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ETERNAL ADVENTURE: BOOK 3, by                    
First Line: I do not claim a writer's bays. A poet I, who sings his lays - what!
Last Line: * * * * * * *
Subject(s): Love; Poetry & Poets; Singing & Singers; Songs


I do not claim a writer's bays. A poet I, who sings his lays. -- What! without
art my song were vain? Listening thereto my grief I tame.

I write the joy of words to win, and sing them. Ah! I know not why. -- The flood
of little words, that try to weep, instead to laugh begin.

But should misfortune still augment, in a cry my pen is shattered quite. -- I do
not know when I lament my sorrow if I sing or write.

II.

Nothing on earth so fair has been as natural song. Sweet lark on high
twittering, sing the azure sky. Sing thou a tomb, O Lamartine.

Sing, owl, these nights in terror's sway, but thou, de Musset, sing as well.
Sing, Keats, sing, passionate Philomel, the fair blue nights that last for aye.

Sing, nightingales, your dolorous pain, like Heinrich Heine or Verlaine, or
sing, sing all your ecstacy, living or dead, alas! -- like me.

III.

Let us write. -- What say I? Let us sing! O hark to my new voice! Give heed! How
pure! and such my lyre indeed that, groping, on its vibrant string

my fingers like Blind Homer's press, eyes dark to his song: its music, stirred
almost sans art, gives forth no less such tunes as air has never heard.

Therewith my merging voice doth sing. I list. How fair my voice's swell! Is this
the Summer or the Spring? Ah, never have I sung so well.

IV.

That which to Moreas I owe is something words can never say. My soul was
wearied, dark with woe. Almost he made of it the gay

sprite of cosmic fires no curb restrains. "Make all your words as light as air!
Mingle them with these buoyant flames whirling above the torches' flare."

That which from Moreas I learned was my secret. Not for him since he, living --
my master! Woe is me! -- clear as today all things discerned.

V.

What did I say just now? that art, skill in words, a poet did not need? . . .
Knowledge must not protrude, indeed; one must know all things, but -- by heart,

after long toil. My sons, 'tis true that faulty writing never pays. The poet I
who sings his lays, being perhaps a writer, too.

The loves of night and morning, these form all the art of twilight fair.
Knowledge and gift, style and sweet air, unite the two antipodes.
* * * * * * *





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