Classic Poem

To the trial of singers ever
Flocks the eager minstrel throng;
Stranger contest was there never
Than this tournament of song.

Wild and bounding Fancy serves them
For a charger brave and fine;
And as buckler Art preserves them,
And their sword is speech divine.

From gay balconies above them
Gladsome beauties gaze beneath,
But the right one is not with them,
With the one right laurel wreath!

Other knights when as they enter
For the jousts are hale and sound;
But we minstrels only venture
Bearing there our own death-wound.

And the bard whose life-blood boundeth
Freest, gushing in his lays,
He is victor; for him soundeth
Beauty's most exalted praise.