Classic Poem

Responds to The Lyric .

I

In the Garden of Poems where each is a flower,
The Ode is an orchid resplendent and rare;
The Sonnet's a classical lily whose power
Moves every heart like a dignified prayer.
The Ballad's a hollyhock, quaintest and queerest
Of old-fashioned flowers that memory knows —
But all these seem faded when Song's at its clearest
And the heart of a lyric's the heart of a rose.

II

So give me the lyric while Nature is teeming
With rhythm and rhyme; while our volumes are filled
With poems of wild and importunate dreaming,
And Heaven itself is uplifted and thrilled.
The universe rocks to the swing of a ballad,
But it warms to a deeper and mightier mirth —
Aye, robbed of its Song the bright world would be pallid;
For the soul of a lyric's the soul of the earth.

III

For Song is eternal; it rides on the aeons —
'Tis shod with men's visions and mystical wings;
'Tis April that quickens the pulse of its paeans,
And Passion that beats in the heart of all things.
You can fathom the ode, be it sad or satiric,
You can measure the sonnet with rule and the rod —
But no one can tear out the soul from the lyric;
For the lilt of a lyric's the laughter of God!