WHAT boots my will to guide a gilded tongue — To hope, or send the plenteous days to find New magic lamps? My childish trumpets wind But faint along the walls whose stones have rung, In older days, with echoes nobler sung! But worth is this — my tender wreath — to bind Or yet adorn? — Antiquity has twined Her hempen bands the moss of years among. We quit the shodden world, ambition stung, And toy with vibrant shafts in the open blue — One with the careless cloud, nursed of dew! Upgathering sweets from ancient hills o'erflung, We bud and bloom, and reach the lips of Love! — And swing, a rattling vine, the autumn pyre above! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: FLETCHER MCGEE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS FLOWER GUIDANCE by ROBERT FROST A PARADOX by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TUNK (A LECTURE ON MODERN EDUCATION) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON TO -, WITH A ROSE by SIDNEY LANIER UNDER THE CEDARCROFT CHESTNUT by SIDNEY LANIER AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR |