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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=343154" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Minor Poet</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;What should such fellows as I do,<br>Crawling between earth and heaven?&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Here is the phial; here I turn the key<br>Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.<br>This is the third time; there is luck in threes--<br>Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now<br>And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!<br>Just as the draught began to work, first time,<br>Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world),<br>Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand,<br>(Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!)<br>And lectured me a lecture, all compact<br>Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled<br>From works of newest culture: &quot;common good ;&quot;<br>&quot;The world's great harmonies;&quot;&quot;must be content<br>With knowing God works all things for the best,<br>And Nature never stumbles.&quot; Then again,<br>&quot;The common good,&quot; and still, &quot;the common, good;&quot;<br>And what a small thing was our joy or grief<br>When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom,<br>But you might wag your philosophic tongue<br>From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same:<br>I am myself, as each man is himself--<br>Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves<br>With his own love, no other's. Friend, the world<br>Is but one man; one man is but the world.<br>And I am I, and you are Tom, that bleeds<br>When needles prick your flesh (mark, yours, not mine).<br>I must confess it; I can feel the pulse<br>A-beating at my heart, yet never knew<br>The throb of cosmic pulses. I lament<br>The death of youth's ideal in my heart;<br>And, to be honest, never yet rejoiced<br>In the world's progress--scarce, indeed, discerned;<br>(For still it seems that God's a Sisyphus<br>With the world for stone).<br>You shake your head. I'm base,<br>Ignoble? Who is noble--you or I?<br>I was not once thus? Ah, my friend, we are<br>As the Fates make us.<br>This time is the third;<br>The second time the flask fell from my hand,<br>Its drowsy juices spilt upon the board;<br>And there my face fell flat, and all the life<br>Crept from my limbs, and hand and foot were bound<br>With mighty chains, subtle, intangible;<br>While still the mind held to its wonted use,<br>Or rather grew intense and keen with dread,<br>An awful dread--I thought I was in Hell.<br>In Hell, in Hell ! Was ever Hell conceived<br>By mortal brain, by brain Divine devised,<br>Darker, more fraught with torment, than the world<br>For such as I? A creature maimed and marr'd <br>From very birth. A blot, a blur, a note<br>All out of tune in this world's instrument.<br>A base thing, yet not knowing to fulfil<br>Base functions. A high thing, yet all unmeet<br>For work that's high. A dweller on the earth,<br>Yet not content to dig with other men<br>Because of certain sudden sights and sounds<br>(Bars of broke music; furtive, fleeting glimpse<br>Of angel faces 'thwart the grating seen)<br>Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach<br>To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb<br>The faces' full perfection, Heaven's gate,<br>Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to,<br>And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold,<br>Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men:<br>&quot;He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive<br>For higher fruits than what our tillage yields;<br>Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride!&quot;<br>Why play with figures? trifle prettily<br>With this my grief which very simply's said,<br>&quot;There is no place for me in all the world&quot;?<br>The world's a rock, and I will beat no more<br>A breast of flesh and blood against a rock. . .<br>A stride across the planks for old time's sake.<br>Ah, bare, small room that I have sorrowed in; <br>Ay, and on sunny days, haply, rejoiced;<br>We know some things together, you and I!<br>Hold there, you rangèd row of books ! In vain<br>You beckon from your shelf. You've stood my friends<br>Where all things else were foes; yet now I'll turn <br>My back upon you, even as the world<br>Turns it on me. And yet--farewell, farewell!<br>You, lofty Shakespere, with the tattered leaves<br>And fathomless great heart, your binding's bruised<br>Yet did I love you less? Goethe, farewell;<br>Farewell, triumphant smile and tragic eyes,<br>And pitiless world-wisdom!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For all men<br>These two. And 'tis farewell with you, my friends,<br>More dear because more near: Theokritus;<br>Heine that stings and smiles; Prometheus' bard;<br>(I've grown too coarse for Shelley latterly:)<br>And one wild singer of to-day, whose song<br>Is all aflame with passionate bard's blood<br>Lash'd into foam by pain and the world's wrong.<br>At least, he has a voice to cry his pain;<br>For him, no silent writhing in the dark,<br>No muttering of mute lips, no straining out<br>Of a weak throat a-choke with pent-up sound,<br>A-throb with pent-up passion. . .<br>Ah, my sun!<br>That's you, then, at the window, looking in<br>To beam farewell on one who's loved you long<br>And very truly. Up, you creaking thing,<br>You squinting, cobwebbed casement!<br>So, at last,<br>I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls.<br>Across that endless sea of London roofs,<br>Weaving such golden wonders on the grey,<br>That almost, for the moment, we forget<br>The world of woe beneath them.<br>Underneath,<br>For all the sunset glory, Pain is king.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal;<br>And I'll not grumble that it's only sun,<br>But open wide my lips--thus--drink it in;<br>Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky<br>(What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue<br>So tender toned, you'd almost think it green)<br>And stretch my hands out--so--to grasp it tight.<br>Ha, ha! 'tis sweet awhile to cheat the Fates,<br>And be as happy as another man.<br>The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine!<br>'Tis a fair world: if dark, indeed, with woe,<br>Yet having hope and hint of such a joy,<br>That a man, winning, well might turn aside,<br>Careless of Heaven . . .<br>O enough; I turn<br>From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope.<br>I have hoped enough; I would not hope again:<br>'Tis hope that is most cruel.<br>Tom, my friend,<br>You very sorry philosophic fool;<br>'Tis you, I think, that bid me be resign'd,<br>Trust, and be thankful.<br>Out on you! Resign'd?<br>I'm not resign'd, not patient, not school'd in<br>To take my starveling's portion and pretend<br>I'm grateful for it. I want all, all, all;<br>I've appetite for all. I want the best:<br>Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life.<br>There's too much patience in the world, I think.<br>We have grown base with crooking of the knee.<br>Mankind--say--God has bidden to a feast;<br>The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks;<br>In troop the guests; each man with appetite<br>Keen-whetted with expectance.<br>In they troop,<br>Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize.<br>What's this? what's this? There are not seats for all!<br>Some men must stand without the gates; and some<br>Must linger by the table, ill-supplied<br>With broken meats. One man gets meat for two,<br>The while another hungers. If I stand<br>Without the portals, seeing others eat<br>Where I had thought to satiate the pangs<br>Of mine own hunger; shall I then come forth<br>When all is done, and drink my Lord's good health<br>In my Lord's water? Shall I not rather turn<br>And curse him, curse him for a niggard host?<br>O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years,<br>Till appetite grows craving, then disease;<br>I am starved, wither'd, shrivelled.<br>Peace, O peace!<br>This rage is idle; what avails to curse<br>The nameless forces, the vast silences<br>That work in all things.<br>This time is the third,<br>I wrought before in heat, stung mad with pain,<br>Blind, scarcely understanding; now I know<br>What thing I do.<br>There was a woman once;<br>Deep eyes she had, white hands, a subtle smile,<br>Soft speaking tones: she did not break my heart,<br>Yet haply had her heart been otherwise<br>Mine had not now been broken. Yet, who knows?<br>My life was jarring discord from the first:<br>Tho' here and there brief hints of melody,<br>Of melody unutterable, clove the air.<br>From this bleak world, into the heart of night,<br>The dim, deep bosom of the universe,<br>I cast myself. I only crave for rest;<br>Too heavy is the load. I fling it down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>EPILOGUE.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We knocked and knocked; at last, burst in the door,<br>And found him as you know--the outstretched arms<br>Propping the hidden face. The sun had set,<br>And all the place was dim with lurking shade.<br>There was no written word to say farewell,<br>Or make more clear the deed.<br>I search'd and search'd;<br>The room held little: just a row of books<br>Much scrawl'd and noted; sketches on the wall,<br>Done rough in charcoal; the old instrument<br>(A violin, no Stradivarius)<br>He played so ill on; in the table drawer<br>Large schemes of undone work. Poems half-writ;<br>Wild drafts of symphonies; big plans of fugues;<br>Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand:<br>No more--the scattered pages of a tale,<br>A sorry tale that no man cared to read.<br>Alas, my friend, I lov'd him well, tho' he<br>Held me a cold and stagnant-blooded fool,<br>Because I am content to watch, and wait<br>With a calm mind the issue of all things.<br>Certain it is my blood's no turbid stream;<br>Yet, for all that, haply I understood<br>More than he ever deem'd; nor held so light<br>The poet in him. Nay, I sometimes doubt<br>If they have not, indeed, the better part--<br>These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep<br>Because the night or a woman's face is fair.<br>Meantime there is much talk about my friend.<br>The women say, of course, he died for love;<br>The men, for lack of gold, or cavilling<br>Of carping critics. I, Tom Leigh, his friend<br>I have no word at all to say of this.<br>Nay, I had deem'd him more philosopher;<br>For did he think by this one paltry deed<br>To cut the knot of circumstance, and snap<br>The chain which binds all being?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Amy+Levy">Amy Levy</a><div class=q>
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Crawling between earth and heaven?&quot;


Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rul..."></div>
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