Poems (Stuart)/For Fasting Days
FOR FASTING DAYS.
Are you my songs, importunate of praise?Be still, remember for your comfortingThat sweeter birds have had less leave to singBefore men piped them from their lonely ways.
Greener leaves than yours are lost in every springRubies far redder thrust their eager raysInto the blindfold dark for many daysBefore men chose them for a finger-ring.
Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive notThe passing fashion's prize, for dole or due—Men's summer-sweet unrecognition—grieve not:Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that youShould go unsung than sing as you believe not,Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.