Main Street, and Other Poems

Apology

(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)

 For blows on the fort of evil
  That never shows a breach,
 For terrible life-long races
  To a goal no foot can reach,
 For reckless leaps into darkness
  With hands outstretched to a star,
 There is jubilation in Heaven
  Where the great dead poets are.

 There is joy over disappointment
  And delight in hopes that were vain.
 Each poet is glad there was no cure
  To stop his lonely pain.
 For nothing keeps a poet
  In his high singing mood
 Like unappeasable hunger
  For unattainable food.

 So fools are glad of the folly
  That made them weep and sing,
 And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
  And Drummond for his king.
 They know that on flinty sorrow
  And failure and desire
 The steel of their souls was hammered
  To bring forth the lyric fire.

 Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
  McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
 See now why their hatred of tyrants
  Was so insistently fierce.
 Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
  To cheat a poet's eye?
 Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
  In which to sing and to die!

 So not for the Rainbow taken
  And the magical White Bird snared
 The poets sing grateful carols
  In the place to which they have fared;
 But for their lifetime's passion,
  The quest that was fruitless and long,
 They chorus their loud thanksgiving
  To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.