#9

From the book: The Worlds One Thousand Best Poems Vol. 9
copyright 1929, Funk and Wagnalls Co.

Poetry is Such Sweet Sorrow

Ye flowers, sigh forth your ordours with sad buds;
Flush deep, ye roses and anemones
And more than ever now, oh hyacinth, show
Your written sorrows-- the sweet singer's dead.

I heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till my blood was frozen slowly,
And my eyes were darkened wholly,

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark.

Stormid at with shot and shell,
Boldly I rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death
Into the mouth of hell.

But now shine on, and what care I,
Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl
To countercharm of space and hollow sky,
And do accept my madness, and would die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyestrings break in death,
When I soar through tracks unknown
See thee on Thy Judgment-Throne;

Nay, Tell me first in what new region springs
A flowr, that bears inscribed the names of kings.