Classic Poem

We who praise poets with our labouring pen
And justify ourselves with laud of men,
Have not the right to call our own our own,
Being but the groundsprouts from those great trees grown.
The crafted art, the smooth curve, and surety
Come not of nature till the apprentice free
Of trouble with his tools, and cobwebbed cuts,
Spies out a path his own and casts his plots.
Then looking back on four-square edifices
And wind-and-weather-standing tall houses
He stakes a court, and tries his unpaid hand,
Begins a life whose salt is arid sand,
Whose bread of cactus comes, whose wine is clear
Being bitter water from fount all too near.
Happy if after toil he grow to worth
And praise of complete men of earlier birth,
Of happier pen and more steel-propertied
Nerves: of the able and the mighty dead.