Classic Poem

To Ralph Hodgson

You have sent your verse to me
And a poet must reply
To the gracious courtesy
With whatever tune is nigh,
With whatever little air
Can be plucked from anywhere.

Verse has fled from me so long,
I have quite forgot to sing;
I who had a hoard of song
Now can scarce find anything
Worth the singing, though I grope
Less with fingers than with hope.

Singing at your highest tone:
How shall I return the rhyme,
Whom the gods have left alone
Such a very lengthy time?
So I veer and break and yaw
On my little pipe of straw.

II

Lift up my heart, and sing again
As once you did when I was young,
Before I knew of woe and pain,
When every happy bird that sung
I sang to it, and it to me
Repeated half the melody.

Like a thrush at peep of light,
I would pipe my sunny lay,
Singing how the blackest night
Always has to run away
When the sun climbs from afar
Brandishing his scimitar.

Like an eagle's is your cry;
More of fierceness than of glee,
Sent your pinions to the sky
Bounding our humanity;
Sent you winging to the sun
That is seen of every one.

III

You have climbed a hill, and I
Climbed it too; we saw the sun
Toiling up his hill of sky,
Shouting to the night to run
And hide itself before he came
With his scimitar of flame.

With his scimitar of heat,
With his diadem of fire,
Lightning singing at his feet,
Thunder chanting in the choir,
Twice ten thousand leagues of wind
Shouting victory behind.

You and I know well the hill,
We have climbed it up and down,
Knowing what there is of ill,
Knowing what it is to frown,
Lest the bitter word should be
On the lips of ecstasy.

IV

Still lift up my heart and sing
Once again, as once you knew,
That the end of everything
Is to build it up anew.
Are you sad, my heart? then keep
Singing, singing, lest you weep.

For whoever climbs that hill
They shall feed on bitterness,
Wearying along until,
At the very top of stress,
They shall eat their hearts and know
Joy is kernel of their woe.

They shall breathe a sweeter air,
They shall see with other eyes
What they are and what they were,
And the strange and sad disguise
Of humanity will slip
From the shoulder and the lip.

V

Them the sun shall greet and call,
" Hail, and hail, and hail again,
Elder brothers of us all,
Who descended into pain;
Welcome to the thrones that ye
Sat in through eternity.

" Who descended to the heart,
Who descended to the hell,
Gathering every poisoned dart
Of pain and sorrow, hiding well
In their bosoms all they knew
Of the sin a god can do. "

They shall climb the hell again,
They shall scale the heart anew,
Treading back without a stain
Through the sunlight and the dew,
From the rigour of the clay
To the thrones of yesterday.