The Poet's Job Undone - part 13th
The poet’s role -
It is to know the virtue and ideals
Which make man
When practiced with honour
Conviction, justice, honesty and fairness
Among our fellow creature:
To pull the nettle and the thorn;
To roll the stone forever
To clean, to burn, to forge, to cut
Through rivers of eternal tears
And rebuild truth at home within the heart
Intuitive, forbidden
Yet, it is a chant of balming words
In entertainment, soft and low
Of lofty, eerie watching from the heights
Unscaled by droning workers of the street
And, as the eyes of those who grind
To illuminate and erase the shadows
Darkening the souls, in office, factory
Or ill forsaken love
And shine the beam
Of honour’s path, unforsaken.
And there, all there,
Where the daffodil's song is drooped decay
Where seabirds glide on lifting wings
Warmed by the sun and the sea
That's where the heart of the poet must be -
Casting a spiritual net anew
To trawl for gems of the mind
Art of feeling freely given
Kindly, without care,
Like songs to bandage hate away,
Or repair coldness unloved,
Or re-unite honesty with pride
Or charge the furious fires of Liberty
That man to man the world over
Are one, or will perish forevermore.
poem by Patrick Scott Hogg
Added by Poetry Lover
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