Amaranth

ONCE a poet—long ago—
   Wrote a song as void of art
As the songs that children know,
   And as pure as a child’s heart.
With a sigh he threw it down,
   Saying, “This will never shed
Any glory or renown
   On my name when I am dead.

“I will sing a lordly song
   Men shall hear, when I am gone,
Through the years sound clear and strong
   As a golden clarion.”

So this lordly song he sang
   That would gain him deathless fame—
When the death-knell o’er him rang
   No man even knew its name.

Ay, and when his way he found
   To the place of singing souls,
And beheld their bright heads crowned
   With song-woven aureoles,

He stood shame-faced in the throng,
   For his brow of wreath was bare,
And, alas! his lordly song
   Sere had grown in that sweet air;

Then, all sudden, a divine
   Light fell on him from afar,
And he felt the child-song shine
   On his forehead like a star.

So for ever. Each and all
   Songs of passion or of mirth
That are not heart-pure shall fall
   As a sky-lark’s—to the earth;

But the soul’s song has no bounds—
   Like the voice of Israfel,
From the heaven of heavens it sounds
   To the very hell of hell.