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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354910" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Nevers of Poetry</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never say aught in verse, or grave or gay, <br>That you in prose would hesitate to say. <br>Never in rhyme pretend to tears, unless <br>True feeling sheds them in unfeigned distress; <br>Or some dream-grief, with such a mournful strain <br>As night winds make in pine tops, stirs your brain, <br>To shake them, dew-like, o’er the flowers that bloom <br>In the wild dark, round Joy’s imagined tomb; <br>Or save when doubts that over Love may lower, <br>Like summer clouds, break in a sunny shower <br>Out of your gladdened eyes, to freshen all <br>The bowers of memory with their grateful fall. <br>Never too much affect that polished thing— <br>Once belauded—known as point, or sting. <br>The highest and the noblest growths of wit <br>Are never, or but seldom, touched with it. <br>For of the muse it is not truly born <br>Unless the apex of some burst of scorn, <br>Or irony, or hate all torture-torn! <br>Not to increase the passion, but to make <br>The wave, full surging, on its object break. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never, if you’d be readable at all, <br>Aim overmuch at being ethical. <br>Though she should be a teacher, still the Muse <br>To be a mere schoolmistress should refuse. <br>She should instruct us, but her methods never <br>Be academic ones, however clever. <br>Her morals, like great nature’s morals, aye <br>Should work themselves out in an unforced way, <br>And not so patly as to hint the while <br>At cryptic ingenuities of style. <br>Whate’er the theme, her ethic lights should shine <br>Full forth, as from a central heat divine, <br>Or heat inherent to the passion, wrought <br>Into the chastened harmony of thought; <br>And not be mere extraneous coals of fire <br>Blown for the nonce into factitious ire. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though sone has oft some beauty most divine, <br>Which well we feel, yet cannot well define— <br>Some yearning excellence, intense and far, <br>Coming and going like a clouded star— <br>Some awful glory we but half descry, <br>Like a strong sunset in a stormy sky— <br>Yet ne’er be murky of set purpose, since <br>You only thereby shall the more evince <br>That even the Sublime’s but then made sure <br>When, like a morning alp, it breaks from the obscure. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never heed whether a line strictly goes <br>By learned rule, if, brook-like, it warble as it flows, <br>Or if, in concord with the thought, it fills <br>Fast forward, like a torrent fast flooding from the hills. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never say aught is “fading like a star” <br>Because receding in the past afar, <br>Since stars do not fade, but shine on no less, <br>Thought lost in light to our weaksightedness; <br>And no true trope should ever rest on fancy, <br>But claim a universal relevancy; <br>Nor think a line is racy to the core, <br>And bold, and bravely eloquent, the more <br>It striving seems to tear itself asunder, <br>Like this—“Down there i’ the deep heart o’ the thunder,” <br>But for which, surely (out of chaos), none <br>Might feign to find a sanction, save in fun. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never think harshness the best foil to raise <br>And relish sweetness; for love craggy lays. <br>Yet never be you glib, when passion’s force <br>Should ridge your style, as by a tempest hoarse <br>The deep is roughened into waves that roar <br>At heaven—upheaping, huddling, more and more, <br>To burst at last in booming thunder on the shore. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never be such a pagan as to deem <br>That truth or beauty must diviner seem <br>For some abnormal set-off, hunched and rude, <br>Prowling for evil in the neighbourhood, <br>If such strange opposite breathe not the air <br>Of nature—being found, not conjured there; <br>And never to be graceless be you fain, <br>Till to be graceful you have tried in vain. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never be cheated—never may you be!— <br>Into the cramp belief that poesy <br>Must of necessity in soul be one <br>With the mere form of verse if it but deftly run; <br>Or pour, as with a mill-wheel’s vigorous cheer, <br>A rhyming clatter hard upon the ear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never believe that verse a license knows <br>For aught that would be balderdash in prose, <br>Or that all reason may at any time <br>Find a sufficient substitute in rhyme; <br>Or that because with many words you re fraught, <br>There must be under them some flood of thought. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never compel a simile that wont <br>Take service without forcing; if it don t, <br>As of itself, into your verses flow, <br>But true to liberty—and let it go. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never reject a homely-sounding phrase, <br>That your whole meaning easily conveys, <br>For one made current by some courtly wit <br>Which barely indicates a shade of it, <br>Or which—for probably it so may fall— <br>Does not express what you would mean at all. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never suppose that you in song are free <br>To strain all praise, and make it flattery. <br>To sing of the heroic is to raise <br>One value by another—but to praise <br>Mere clowns, in verse, or natures lean and cold, <br>Is like to setting gravel stones in gold. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never exalt vagaries to a station <br>But due to flights of the imagination— <br>Gas-charged balloons, put vainly all a-bloat, <br>For clouds of God that in the orient float; <br>Theatric thunders, all set brattling for <br>The dread all-shaking tempest-trumps of Thor; <br>For in the end all charlatanry must, <br>The more it startle, but the more disgust. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And lastly, never take for gospel all <br>Your friends say of your genius, when they call <br>Its merits o’er; but at the same time see <br>That you do never take yourself to be <br>So great an ass as your known foes declare <br>They do most solemnly believe you are. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">[Each embryo poet, profit by my strain! <br>Then shall men say, “He has not lived in vain! ”] </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Charles+Harpur">Charles Harpur</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354910" data-title="The Nevers of Poetry de Charles Harpur" data-description="Never say aught in verse, or grave or gay, 
That you in prose would hesitate to say. 
Never in rhyme pretend to tears, unless 
True feeling sheds them in unfeigned distress; 
Or some dream-grief, with such a mournful strain 
As night winds make in..."></div>
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