Classic Poem

I

I F heat of youth, 't is heat suppressed
That fills my breast:
The childhood of a voiceless lyre
Preserves my fire.
I chanted not while I was young;
But ere age chill, I liberate my tongue!

II

Apart from stormy ways of men,
Maine's loneliest glen
Held me as banished, and unheard
I saved my word:
I would not know the bitter taste
Of the crude fame which falls to them that haste.

III

On each impatient year I tossed
A holocaust
Of effort, ashes ere it burned,
And justly spurned.
If now I own maturer days,
I know not: dust to me is passing praise.

IV

But out of life arises song,
Clear, vital, strong, —
The speech men pray for when they pine,
The speech divine
No other can interpret: grand
And permanent as time and race and land.

V

I dreamed I spake it: do I dream,
In pride supreme,
Or, like late lovers, found the bride
Their youth denied,
Is this my stinted passion's flow?
It well may be; and they that read will know.