Classic Poem

Too much of sameness dulls our sense,
Which, like a bowstring, should be tense,
To send those arrows swift and clear,
To cleave the ether of the sphere,
And strike the living heart of song,
And from the electric centre thrill the listening throng.

Too little of the love we feel,
Too little of the hate we know;
Where we should pray, we only kneel,
And all the real life forego.

How can our song be true and loud,
And lifted to the morning cloud,
Across the fields of sunlit dew?
How can we strike the lyre of life,
And sound the future's battle-strife,
Unless our hearts be vibrant, too?

O, would that poets' songs might fling,
Like dews from off the rosebud's wing,
Odors of life's awakening:
And never on the heart's best harpstrings cloy
The splendor of the world's great lyric joy!