Classic Poem

Master who knowest song, the spell of mystical rhythm,
The lure of the cry of the soul, the beat of her mounting wings,
Lover of poets, and lover of youth, and lover of freedom,
Lift for us over the sea the song that no one sings!

Who hath sung of the hour that stalks the land like a phantom,
The fear that starts at its shadow, and turns on itself, and is dumb?
And the land that outbraves her fate with indestructible beauty—
When will the singer to praise her, lover and poet come?

Mediterranean wanderer, haunting the shrines of the poets,
Surges and strains no homeward prayer in thy heart for the free—
There where earth and ocean plead for the freedom-lovers,
Torrent and crag for Byron, for Shelley the stars and the sea?

Never so far they wandered, never so drear their exile
But their hearts still beat in England, and still her need was near;
How they would bid thee, poet, harken thy country's anguish,
If thou so far canst hear it, or carest at all to hear!

What Vergilian odors of earth, what silvery-fountained
Garden that lulled Catullus's heart-ache draws thee now,
Where olive and ilex bear their freight of a poet's blossoms—
Breath and blood of the Muses in the scent and sap of the bough?

Would thou wert here, my poet, where rioting orchards take us,
Meadowy dreams waylay us that lurk in the mothering loam,
And over the hillroads set with whitening shoals of laurel,
Clear as the heaven of Italy, the Northern skies of home!

Comrades that walk beside me have left their hearts behind them
In the long Virginia valley, on the Carolina hill;
Love, to the last horizon, beggarly pleads to be uttered,
And thou, the voice God gave us, art wandering, wandering still!

Thou hast the shrines of silence, the ghosts that cannot answer,
The paths that would not miss thee, though one less pilgrim came;
Here are the passion, the hope of the song that craves the singer,
And the hearts that are waiting, waiting to love him into fame.