Classic Poem

Fixed to a tall stem like a mast,
A board with certain rhymes
Here overlooked the vale and stream:
Where is it in these times?

The lines were scarcely of the best;
Not one can I recall;
The board looked like a board of rules
Against a workhouse wall.

Yet they were meant to honour one
Who honour merited;
A gentle heart and free from guile,
A poet long since dead.

My great-great-grandfather he was,
Although no child had he;
Yet as the lineal heir I'm blessed
With all the property: —

The Castle hight of Indolence,
And all the rich domain
Which to that Castle and its Lords
Doth ever appertain;

Thereto a noble royalty
Of rhymes and various verse, —
The quantity is now much less
The quality much worse

The Castle is so beautiful,
The land so rich and wide;
Such sweet birds sing, such sweet flowers spring,
Such silver streamlets glide!

The Landlord and the Tenants all
Are far too indolent
For that which troubles most estates,
The payment of a rent.

II

You're not quite sure you ever heard
This pleasant poet's name?
But you will like him womanlike
Since someone bears the same?

I'm sure you never read a page
Of anything he wrote;
I'm sure for all his books of verse
You would not care a groat.

Were I to read you some, of course
You'd make a fine pretence,
How pretty! pleased to see me pleased,
Not caring for the sense.

And you are right: Doth Lycidas
Leave Milton's tome and urge
Young Adonais to recite
His supramortal dirge?

Do roses gaze on pictured walls
Where scentless roses bloom?
Do stars read sonnets where we praise
Their shining through the gloom?

Sweet living Poem! Why should you
Read dull dead words that shrine
Dim echoes of your voice, rude hints
Of your own grace divine?

III

The Castle hight of Indolence
Holds many pictures fair;
And many portraits with his own
The Architect placed there.

But one grand portrait lacked, alack!
And in his secret Will
He gave his heirs a solemn charge
This mighty void to fill.

The Portrait of the very Lord
Of all the Lords who sway
The Castle and its happy realms
Was wanting to this day!

He ever lives, this Lord supreme,
In many a quaint disguise;
Full hard to meet, and then when met
Full hard to recognise.

I met him, knew him, loved him well;
For me he dropped his mask;
To place his portrait in our Hall
Has been my pleasant task.

Here is the sketch, — how thin and blurred!
He dreams, beyond desire,
Clothed with the ninefold robes of verse
Loved by our Eastern Sire.