Be silent! Let them laugh and lie Nor speak nor heed but come away; In truth they neither live nor die, More vain than gaudy flies that play And perish in the vital day. By rule and custom, time and place, Secure in noise and littleness, They live and laugh and lust a space, Incurious of themselves lest stress Of truth annul their nothingness. Their borrowed praise, their hired blame, Their timid platitudes, their greed, The virtue of their hidden shame, The vices of their sordid creed, Are theirs to serve a social need. Their crime then? None! Their lives are food To vainer things, and they shall seem, Afraid of sin, too weak for good, Once vanished, like a stupid dream That never was -- and now my theme! -- Be something, good or bad! Be real! They are not, -- we'll take issue here Against them! -- not for base ideal Or murdered truth, but for their mere Respectability, the mood of fear! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE MOUNTAIN FASTNESS by HAYDEN CARRUTH NOTES FOR THE FIRST LINE OF A SPANISH POEM by JAMES GALVIN DEAR OLD DICK by EDGAR LEE MASTERS TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE by MARIANNE MOORE JOE HILL LISTENS TO THE PRAYING by KENNETH PATCHEN IN THE TRENCHES by ISAAC ROSENBERG |