The Silent Muse
``Why have you silent been so long?''
In tones of mild rebuke you ask.
Know you not, kindly friend, that Song
Is the ``Gay Science,'' not a task?
It is but when it pleaseth God
The blackthorn blows, the acorns fall;
The Muse ignores a mortal's nod,
And will not come to beck and call.
If I, to catch the ear of men,
Should go on singing day by day,
What other, better, were I then,
Than screeching chough or scolding jay?
But save the unseen source be stirred,
The happy numbers will not flow:
Then one is like a songless bird
That crouches in the drifted snow.
Say, did you ever sit and dream,
When summer clouds are white and still,
Beside a slow unsounding stream
That winds below some rustic mill?
The languid current scarcely moves;
At times you almost doubt it flows;
Loitering in shallow sandy grooves,
It makes no music as it goes.
The sluice is down, the mill-race still,
Nor in mid-stream nor water's edge
Comes faintest ripple, tiniest rill,
To stir the flag, or sway the sedge.
Beside the dozing stream you doze,
For nothing wakes in air or sky:
It feels as if Time's eyelids close,
And 'tis the same to live or die;
To be a passive part of all
That rounds Heaven's universal plan,
Of things that soar, of things that crawl,
Of mindless matter, as of man.
When slowly through the noonday sleep
A phantom something seems to stir,
Like waves of dewy light that creep
Along gray chords of gossamer.
[...] Read more
poem by Alfred Austin
Added by Poetry Lover
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