Apology

(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)     For blows on the fort of evil     That never shows a breach,     For terrible life-long races     To a goal no foot can reach,     For reckless leaps into darkness     With hands outstretched to a star,     There is jubilation in Heaven     Where the great dead poets are.     There is joy over disappointment     And delight in hopes that were vain.     Each poet is glad there was no cure     To stop his lonely pain.     For nothing keeps a poet     In his high singing mood     Like unappeasable hunger     For unattainable food.     So fools are glad of the folly     That made them weep and sing,     And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne     And Drummond for his king.     They know that on flinty sorrow     And failure and desire     The steel of their souls was hammered     To bring forth the lyric fire.     Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,     McDonough and Hunt and Pearse     See now why their hatred of tyrants     Was so insistently fierce.     Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp     To cheat a poet's eye?     Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause     In which to sing and to die!     So not for the Rainbow taken     And the magical White Bird snared     The poets sing grateful carols     In the place to which they have fared;     But for their lifetime's passion,     The quest that was fruitless and long,     They chorus their loud thanksgiving     To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.