Classic Poem

Nights of old song:
Up on the top floor of his house, the Columbia student teaches me poetry:
Room of a thousand books, how I love it!

He is later to be a lawyer: though I shall never think of him as a lawyer:
For there is a sparkling sympathy, a wisdom, and a joy he shares with all,
Spending himself for needy ones, especially for the neediest, the Negroes …
What should I ever have done without him in the great practical crises?

Nights of song recollected!
My head always aches with the champagne of Spingarn's talk:
And through the throbbing pain I dart laughing after his flashwing'd thoughts
Borne on his soft laughter and the enchanting song that visits his voice …
It is not poetry I learn, but the source of poetry,
The love which he conveys for the magic that is song …

Gates of dream open …
Many secret nights at home I sit echoing Shakespeare on paper:
But there is an amazing evening, I am seized and overwhelmed by a tide of the Music;
Greatness dawns in an illumination and a liberation,
And I know I am one of the poets.

Arthur, most magical of teachers,
It was you first took me to my great headland
And said, “There rolls the sea,”
And my soul answered, “My sea! My sea!”

How old you seemed to me then!
And how many years it took for me to remember you were only a little older than I,
So that we could be friends!