Classic Poem

If you were the poet some said you were,
With such inspiration for your pen
You'd write an immortal song of her
Would make her loveliness known to men.
Come, try again.

How many a singer has left to Time
A lilting tribute to A or B
For lovers to quote as original rhyme!
Yet who of them half so fair as she?
How could they be?

Though Helen is launching no thousand ships,
And Sylvia's secret is undescried,
Fame ever will sing of eyes and lips;
Beauty with nobody's dying died.
Love will abide.

Who knows if Beatrice was forsooth
The paragon fanciful Dante knew!
Was Cleopatra in very truth
The portrait that bountiful Shakespeare drew,
Or just his cue?

Perhaps even Venus, divinely starred,
Owes much to some poet's second sight;
But she you love with the love of a bard —
Shall you leave to another to flash her light
On the bosom of night?

You don't have to utter extravagant things
Like the elder poets, whose giving of bays —
Imaginary meanderings —
Went well in the unrealistic days
Of over-praise.

For see, how Nature has done its part,
With nothing needed but, poet-wise,
Just to transcribe, as one does, by heart,
Her dominant, magical charm that lies
Before your eyes.

There's tripping Youth of the backward glance
That all must follow, or bond or free;
And Life, still tangled in old Romance;
And wide-eyed Wonder, and Sympathy,
And the Joy-to-Be.

And then the flow of her dainty lines;
And the eyes of Humor that close to ill;
And the heart of Hope that never repines;
And her smile of good-will that prompts good-will;
And her laugh's pure rill.

Naught have I said of her glowing soul,
And naught of her fresh and nimble mind;
The body is only the spirit's bowl.
Your art is to show what lies behind
To those that are blind.

Oh, little's the time you've left to sing
If the world is thus to be happier.
Twill not be long till your years take wing.
If you are the poet they said you were
Come, sing of her!