To A Poet

Thou who singest through the earth,          All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,     Everywhere thou marrest mirth.          Dumbly they defy thee.     There is something they deny thee.     Pines thy fallen nature ever     For the unfallen Nature sweet.     But she shuns thy long endeavour,          Though her flowers and wheat     Throng and press thy pausing feet.     Though thou tame a bird to love thee,     Press thy face to grass and flowers,     All these things reserve above thee          Secrets in the bowers,     Secrets in the sun and showers.     Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.     In thy songs must wind and tree     Bear the fictions of thy sadness,          Thy humanity.     For their truth is not for thee.     Wait, and many a secret nest,     Many a hoarded winter-store     Will be hidden on thy breast.          Things thou longest for     Will not fear or shun thee more.     Thou shalt intimately lie     In the roots of flowers that thrust     Upwards from thee to the sky,          With no more distrust,     When they blossom from thy dust.     Silent labours of the rain     Shall be near thee, reconciled;     Little lives of leaves and grain,             All things shy and wild     Tell thee secrets, quiet child.     Earth, set free from thy fair fancies     And the art thou shalt resign,     Will bring forth her rue and pansies          Unto more divine     Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.     Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.     There will lie thy mortal burden     Pressed unto the heart of Nature,          Songless in a garden,     With a long embrace of pardon.     Then the truth all creatures tell,     And His will whom thou entreatest,     Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell             Silence, the completest     Of thy poems, last, and sweetest.