Classic Poem

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound;
She feels no biting pang the while she sings;
Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.

No pang to me my minnesinging brings;
I pen my poems by the very pound.
(They say, whene'er one strikes the lyric strings,
Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound)

My reckless muse, ungirdled and uncrowned,
Sings on, sings on of cabbages and kings;
Skyward she soars, or digs below the ground—
She feels no biting pang the while she sings.

Coherence to the well-known winds she flings;
She cares not if the clock of Time be wound,
Nor recks she, as she plays, if wealth have wings,
Nor as she turns the giddy wheel around.

She muses on the souls confined and bound;
On barren winters and on sapful springs;
And as she stands upon her airy mound,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.

I like a poem when it sort of swings,
And floats and sinks—at times you think it's drowned—
And lives, and dies, and falls away, and clings.
But, in a long career, I've never found
Verse sweetens toil.