I
To get at the eternal strength of things, And fearlessly to make strong songs of it, Is, to my mind, the mission of that man The world would call a poet.He may sing But roughly, and withal ungraciously;But if he touch to life the one right chord Wherein God's music slumbers, and awake To truth one drowsed ambition, he sings well.
II
We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;We shrink too sadly from the larger self Which for its own completeness agitates And undetermines us; we do not feel --We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame Of uncreated failure; we forget, The while we groan, that God's accomplishment Is always and unfailingly at hand.
III
To mortal ears the plainest word may ring Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false And out of tune as ever to our own Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;But if that word be the plain word of Truth, It leaves an echo that begets itself, Persistent in itself and of itself, Regenerate, reiterate, replete.
IV
Tumultuously void of a clean scheme Whereon to build, whereof to formulate, The legion life that riots in mankind Goes ever plunging upward, up and down, Most like some crazy regiment at arms, Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance, And ever led resourcelessly along To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.
V
To me the groaning of world-worshippers Rings like a lonely music played in hell By one with art enough to cleave the walls Of heaven with his cadence, but without The wisdom or the will to comprehend The strangeness of his own perversity, And all without the courage to deny The profit and the pride of his defeat.