Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A YOUNG POET, by THOMAS WALSH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A YOUNG POET, by                    
First Line: There are two portals set before thy heart
Last Line: Walk not the fens alone!
Alternate Author Name(s): Gill, Roderick; Strange, Garrett
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


THERE are two portals set before thy heart,
O poet yet uncrowned,—
One reared in radiant noon, the other bound
In rust and gloom apart.

Round one, with sway of civic chant and chime
Wind throngs of youths and maids
With garlands through the soaring colonnades
In Druid rite sublime.

The lictors pass, the harvest hymns are sung,
High flame the hero pyres,
While hands prophetic sweep the sacred lyres
Of hope forever young.

But where the other postern lurks below
Amid the briar and weed,
White bones lay strewn and venomed monsters feed
Beneath the marshlamp's glow.

There stealthy murmurs, cheeks like snowdrift, call
Thy fevered senses out,—
Far pulse of dancing feet and satyr shout,
Vague breasts that heave and fall.

There madness waits,—O heart, thy mission own
Among the sons of day!
Forth with the throngs upon the sunlit way,—
Walk not the fens alone!





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