Rosemary and Pansies/The Poet's Heart

by Bertram Dobell

THE POET'S HEART

Time was when I a poet's name
Ambitiously did seek;
But ah! no more I crave for fame,
My spirits bent and weak:
Alas! to will is not to do,
To strive not to attain;
How many start to climb—how few
Parnassus' summit gain!

To feel poetic sympathies
Doth not a poet make,
But oh! 'tis hard we can't reveal
Our rapture or heartache;
Sad to be dumb when we would fain
Pour out our joy or woe—
The rich reward, the priceless gain
That poets only know—

Of hearing said in grateful words
By youth or maiden fair,—
"Ah! in that verse my heart that bled
In helpless dumb despair
Has found its voice at last, and pours
Out in a flood its grief;
My woe that grovelled now outsoars
Itself, and gains relief!"

Or, in the verse the lover finds
His rapturous love portrayed
So wondrously, he cries—"What minds
These poets have—some aid
Supernal they must needs obtain,
Else how could they display
The thoughts that folded in my brain,
Hopeless of utterance, lay?"

Ah! had I but the poet's heart
All else would I forego,
And bear with patience every smart
Fate might on me bestow:
No other gift so rich and rare
Can mortal man obtain,
E'en though 'tis linked with carking care,
And with the world's disdain.

When vain is philosophic speech
And reason pleads in vain,
Even then the poet's words will reach
The heart and soothe its pain:
There's no dark corner of the soul
The poet may not scan—
Philosophers see part—the whole
Only the poet can.

1885