For blows on the fort of evil <br />That never shows a breach, <br />For terrible life-long races <br />To a goal no foot can reach, <br />For reckless leaps into darkness <br />With hands outstretched to a star, <br />There is jubilation in Heaven <br />Where the great dead poets are. <br /> <br />There is joy over disappointment <br />And delight in hopes that were vain. <br />Each poet is glad there was no cure <br />To stop his lonely pain. <br />For nothing keeps a poet <br />In his high singing mood <br />Like unappeasable hunger <br />For unattainable food. <br /> <br />So fools are glad of the folly <br />That made them weep and sing, <br />And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne <br />And Drummond for his king. <br />They know that on flinty sorrow <br />And failure and desire <br />The steel of their souls was hammered <br />To bring forth the lyric fire. <br /> <br />Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett, <br />McDonough and Hunt and Pearse <br />See now why their hatred of tyrants <br />Was so insistently fierce. <br />Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp <br />To cheat a poet's eye? <br />Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause <br />In which to sing and to die! <br /> <br />So not for the Rainbow taken <br />And the magical White Bird snared <br />The poets sing grateful carols <br />In the place to which they have fared; <br />But for their lifetime's passion, <br />The quest that was fruitless and long, <br />They chorus their loud thanksgiving <br />To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.<br /><br />Alfred Joyce Kilmer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/apology-43/
