Classic Poem

Poet of poets
Is Time, the distiller,
Chemist, refiner:

Time hath a vitriol
Which can dissolve
Towns into melody,
Rubbish to gold.
Burn up the libraries!
Down with the colleges!
Raze the foundations!
Drive out the doctors!
Rout the philosophers!
Exile the critics!
Men of particulars,
Narrowing niggardly
Something to nothing.
All their ten thousand ways
End in the Neant.

All through the countryside
Rush locomotives:
Prosperous grocers
Poring on newspapers
Over their shop fires
Settle the State.
But, for the Poet, —
Seldom in centuries
Comes the well-tempered
Musical man.
He is the waited-for,
He is the complement,
One man of all men.
The random wayfarer
Counts him of his kin.
This is he that should come
The tongue of the secret,
The key of the casket,
Of Past & of Future.
Sudden the lustre
That hovered round cities,
Round bureaus of Power,
Or Chambers of Commerce,
Round banks, or round beauties,
Or state-rending factions,
Has quit them, & perches
Well pleased on his form.
True bard never cared
To flatter the princes
Costs time to live with them.
Ill genius affords it,
Preengaged to the skies.
Foremost of all men
The Poet inherits
Badge of nobility,
Charter of Earth;
Free of the city,
Free of the meadows,
Knight of each order,
Sworn of each guild,
Fellow of monarchs,
And, what is better,
Mate of all men.

Pan's paths are wonderful.
Subtile his counsel.
Wisdom needs circumstance,
Many concomitants,
Goes not in purple,
Steals along secretly,
Shunning the eye;
Has the dominion
Of men & the planet,
On this sole condition, —
She shall not assume it.
When the crown first incloses
The brows of her son,
The Muse him deposes
From kingdom & throne.

See the spheres rushing, —
Poet that tracks them
With emulous eye,
What lovest thou?
Planet, or orbit?
Whether the pipe,
Or the lay, it discourses?
In heaven, up yonder,
All the astronomy,
Sun-dance & star blaze,
Is Emblem of love.

Nought is of worth
In earth or in sky
But Love & Thought only.
Fast perish the mankind,
Firm bideth the thought,
Clothes it with Adam-kind,
Puts on a new suit
Of earth & of stars.
He will come one day
Who can articulate
That which unspoken
Vaults itself over us,
Globes itself under us,
Looks out of lovers' eyes,
Dies, & is born again; —
He who can speak well;
Men hearing delighted
Shall say, " that is ours ."
Trees hearing shall blossom,
Rocks hearing shall tremble,
And range themselves dreamlike
In new compositions,
Architecture of thought.
Then will appear
What the old centuries,
Aeons were groping for,
Times of discomfiture,
Bankrupt millenniums.