Are you my songs, importunate of praise? <br />Be still, remember for your comforting <br />That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing <br />Before men piped them from their lonely ways. <br /> <br />Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring <br />Rubies far redder thrust your eager rays <br />Into the blindfold dark for many days <br />Before men chose them for a finger-ring. <br /> <br />Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not <br />The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due- <br />Men's summer-sweet unrecognition-grieve not: <br />Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that you <br />Should go unsung than sing as you believe not, <br />Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.<br /><br />Muriel Stuart<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-fasting-days/
