Classic Poem

( THE TRIBUTE OF AN IDEALIST )

Why for bare forms of thought should we contend?
You call him realist? I hail him here
Truthful, acute, alert, profound, sincere —
Searchlight of souls where Vice and Virtue blend;
Goad of the faltering conscience, lest it bend
Before the blast of circumstance, in fear;
Iconoclast of cant; ironic seer;
No enemy of the people, but their friend.

Something of Dante is not far to seek
When this grim, faithful surgery we see
Dividing wrong from right and strong from weak.
Kindred to Sophocles he well might be
Since to the three Fates of the ancient Greek
He adds a fourth — Man's dire heredity.

ON READING HIS " POEMS BRIEF AND NEW "

Architect of faultless rhyme,
Your house shall stand forever more,
For deep and strong
Must be the song
If it would weather the winds of Time.
And Beauty must beckon at every door.

Here no weak ornament conceals
Some trivial thought; but every line
Of lofty speech
Is akin to each,
And, like a chime of many peals,
No note may be spared from the full design.

Ah, 'tis but in the house of dream
We learn what life is fashioned of;
Your fancies show,
Twixt Joy and Woe,
There are, whatever others seem,
But two immortals, Art and Love.