On a Fly-Leaf

IN JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY'S POEMS

SINGERS there are of courtly themes —
Drapers in verse — who would dress their rhymes
In robes of ermine; and singers of dreams
Of gods high-throned in the classic times;
Singers of nymphs, in their dim retreats,
Satyrs, with scepter and diadem;
But the singer who sings as a man's heart beats
Well may blush for the rest of them.

I like the thrill of such poems as these, —
All spirit and fervor of splendid fact —
Pulse, and muscle, and arteries
Of living, heroic thought and act! —

Where every line is a vein of red
And rapturous blood all unconfined
As it leaps from a heart that has joyed and bled
With the rights and the wrongs of all mankind.
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