1 Not the sweet solitude which poets love Of sylvan home, set on some sunny knoll, By gently-flowing stream; or in some dell Sequestered, with bird-voices welling song At morn and eve; where from the peering eyes Of men shut off, and roar of the great world, Year after year, uninterruptedly, Works the rapt bard at his allotted task; Not this sweet solitude, though much desired, Not this sweet isolation has been mine: But, up till now, ocean in sun and storm, Where sometimes proudly speeds the ship, sometimes Stands struggling for her life with the fierce gale, While waves bestride her decks, and round her sing, Like furies in their flight, the frenzied winds: Not constancy of the oak, rooted in one spot, But change kaleidoscopic, broken bits Of life in foreign lands, these have been mine: My home the round earth and the world of men. 2 Yet loves my soul this life: for through me runs -- Though grown less masterful in its long detour Down urban generations, of the sail And oar and helm forgetful -- a viking vein, A passion for the world-encircling wave, From some Norse sire, whose galley was his home, Some rider of the deep blue water drawn, Blue-eyed, flavicomous; and within me lives, Like sea-bird caged within a city room, A secret wildness that will not be tamed, An instinct from the Baltic and the Fiords. 3 Thus double-natured, loving diverse lives, Man halts: God in his wisdom sets the task. 4 But who, ye Muses, who that hath beheld Your shapes celestial, and your eerie song Heard, that divine enthrallment hath escaped Which visits those who on your beauty gaze? Like is that man to one of Bacchus' slaves Who once hath tasted Helicon's bright draught. In dreams he hears the circling sisters sing, And seeks to re-enter that divine abode. The nympholepsy of the seer o'ertakes him: Seizures henceforth, weird trances are his doom. Not in this world, but in that mystic other, His spirit -- oft returning -- finds its joy. As pale Chinese, or Hindoo haggard-faced, Each in his drug surcease of sorrow seeks, Poppy or hasheesh, so the poet, dazed By voices sweet from the empyreal air, Leaves all things for the Muses' magic cup. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHAMBER MUSIC: 28 by JAMES JOYCE SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: GEORGE GRAY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS NO MATTER WHAT, AFTER ALL, AND THAT BEAUTIFUL WORD SO by HAYDEN CARRUTH WISDOM COMETH WITH THE YEARS by COUNTEE CULLEN THEY HAVEN'T HEARD THE WEST IS OVER by JAMES GALVIN PROVING by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON REVIEW by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE MAN TO BE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON NOBODY'S LOOKIN' BUT DE OWL AND DE MOON (A NEGRO SERENADE) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON |