_Why do we make our music?_ <br />Oh, blind dark strings reply: <br />Because we dwell in a strange land <br />And remember a lost sky. <br />We ask no leaf of the laurel, <br />We know what fame is worth; <br />But our songs break out of our winter <br />As the flowers break out on the earth. <br /> <br />And we dream of the unknown comrade, <br />In the days when we lie dead, <br />Who shall open our book in the sunlight, <br />And read, as ourselves have read, <br />On a lonely hill, by a firwood, <br />With whispering seas below, <br />And murmur a song we made him <br />Ages and ages ago. <br /> <br />If making his may-time sweeter <br />With dews of our own dead may, <br />One pulse of our own dead heart-strings <br />Awake in his heart that day, <br />We would pray for no richer guerdon, <br />No praise from the careless throng; <br />For song is the cry of a lover <br />In quest of an answering song. <br /> <br />As a child might run to his elders <br />With news of an opening flower <br />We should walk with our young companion <br />And talk to his heart for an hour, <br />As once by my own green firwood, <br />And once by a Western sea, <br />Thank God, my own good comrades <br />Have walked and talked with me. <br /> <br />Too mighty to make men sorrow, <br />Too weak to heal their pain <br />(Though they that remember the hawthorn <br />May find their heaven again), <br />We are moved by a deeper hunger; <br />We are bound by a stronger cord; <br />For love is the heart of our music, <br />And love is its one reward.<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-reward-of-song/
