ON a time — not of old — <br />When a poet had sent out his soul and no welcome had found <br />Where the heart of the nation in prose stood fettered and bound <br />In fold upon fold — <br />He called back his soul who had pined for an answer afloat; <br />And thus in the silence of night and the pride of his spirit he wrote. <br /> <br />Come back, poet-thought! <br />For they honor thee not in thy vesture of verse and of song. <br />Come back — thou hast hovered about in the market too long. <br />In vain thou hast sought <br />To stem the strong current that flows from the Philistine lands. <br />Thou hast failed to deliver the message the practical public demands. <br /> <br />Come back to the heights <br />Of thy vision — thy love — thy Parnassus of beauty and truth, <br />From the valleys below where the labor of age and of youth <br />Has no need of thy lights; <br />For science has marshalled the way with a lamp of its own. <br />Till they woo thee with wakening love thou must follow thy pathway alone. <br /> <br />We have striven, have toiled, <br />Have pressed with the foremost to sing to the men of our time <br />The thought that was deepest, the lay that was lightest in rhyme. <br />We are baffled and foiled. <br />The crowd hurries on intent upon traffic and pay; <br />They have ears, but they hear not. What chance to be heard has the poet to-day? <br /> <br />So we turn from the crowd, <br />And we sing as we please, like the thrush far away in the woods. <br />They may listen or not, as they choose, to our fancies and moods <br />Chanted low — chanted loud, <br />In the sunshine and storm — 'mid the hearts that are tender or hard. <br />What need of applause from the world, when Art is its own reward?<br /><br />Christopher Pearse Cranch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poet-s-soliloquy/
