4523973Poems — Would I were a PoetMary Caroline Denver and Jane Campbell Denver
WOULD I WERE A POET.
Make not such wish—'tis vain as the ideal, Which the heart worships in its lonely hour; A shadow melting into nothing real, When sober thought again asserts her power. Make not such wish—thou little knowest the swellings Found in the ocean of a poet's life, Around those pure and delicate indwellings, That gleam like jeweled caverns through the strife.
The struggling of strong thoughts, the waste of feeling, The burning heart, consuming all its own, And like a stern and wayward spirit, sealing Its own strange destiny, thou hast not known; The many thronging waves that, spent and wasted, Subside and sink into the troubled main; The cup of sweet affection only tasted, Never to meet the eager lips again.
Too much, too dearly loved, the heart is pouring Before that shrine its every life-throb out; And from the classic page of mind is storing Its own with things of beauty or of doubt; Bright thoughts that float a moment on life's ocean,— Perchance the eyes that gaze on them are blind,— Then downward fall with an unconscious motion Back to the past—that maelstrom of the mind.
Bright thoughts like glittering phantoms sometimes cheer us, And make our world a paradise of love; Yet sad presentiments are ever near us, Haunting our footsteps wheresoe'er we move, That we but toil in vain—that we are burning Our last lamp out, not to be lit again, Over an idle page of worthless learning, Which we, alas! would comprehend in vain.
Towards a far port our bark of life is steering, Worn in the conflict with each petty wave, Upheld by only the vain hope of hearing A voice of praise, when anchored in—the grave. Poor compensation for a spirit broken, In a too aimless and uncertain flight,— A worn-out life, the sure and early token Of many a weary day and sleepless night.
Too early loved!—well may the spirit falter, When ploughing through the cheerless sea of doubt, When thus, before the sacrificial altar, Morn, noon and night, it pours its life-tides out. Yet not reluctantly, if but, relying Upon the value of the gift it brings, Its last hopes are, like the sweet swan's, when dying, To make its last the sweetest song it sings.
Like one high-mounted on the funeral pyre, Bound to the body of the senseless dead, While all around him rise up flames of fire And words of dark significance are said; So stands the poet in his hour of trial, With none to save him from the funeral pile; Well knowing that entreaty were denial, He faces death with an accusing smile.
