Poems (Van Rensselaer)/The Poet

by Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer

For works with similar titles, see The Poet.

THE POET

Is the voice as an echo of voices of old,The song but a singing of tales oft told?Then the eyes of the singer are dim and his pulses cold:For, as hour follows hour, in a splendor of birthThe world is refilled with things living and true;And, fresh thing or ancient, though old as the earth,The singer who sees it aright he maketh it new.When it comes to him (be it or love,Or passion, or vision of death,The tempest-wind's breath,The clash of the sea, the complaint of the dove,A glint of the green where the elms bud again,The stars in the flag, the shrill of the fife,A rapture of strength, a whirlwind of pain—Be it aught that means life or the ceasing of life,)What imports is the way his heart takes it,The web into which he makes it,The pattern it leavesIn the garment he weavesFor his spirit.For his spirit.Remember, thou singer, thou poet,Who lovest the world, that thou neverIn all of thy singing canst show it,The world as it is: Not even canst picture the rose—It is never her color that shows;Not even canst tell of a bird—It is never his note that is heard.What thou showest is this:Thyself, thine own soul; and not everThat soul as it nakedly came from thy mother.Thy hands and no otherMust dress it in garments of spirits long dead,Begged, stolen, or borrowed, or bought,In rags that thy betters have shed,Or else in a woof thou hast wroughtUpon looms of thine own with thy love and thy pain,Thy fears and thy powers, thy fortunes of loss and of gain,The beauty, the terror, that fall to thy part,The ache and the infinite joy of thy heart;And with sun and with stars newly plucked from the heaven,With lilies and rainbows, with gems from the mine,And jewels of spray of the sea. These are thineIf thou knowest to look and to grasp and to weave.And, thy garment once wovenFull strong in its tissue and shiningly bright,Whatever thou showest in song it shall leaveIn the life of the listener an echo of light. He shall cry,He shall cry,"A new man, a new heart,A soul that can play a soul's part,A leader for us who but want to be led,From tombs where the dead lie dead,Toward heights where the living shall live(It is promised) a life better worthThanksgiving to Life than to-day unto many can giveThis hoary and vexèd yet youthful and eager old earth."

Through the silence of night and the rollOf the drums of the difficult dayThy voice shall ring clear, and the people will hearken and say,"Let us follow this guide who has clothed his own soulWith the brightness of morning, the strength of the noon,The compassion of dusk, the peace of the light of the crescent moon."