Other Verses

Arthur Henry Adams 1872 (Lawrence) – 1936 (Sydney, New South Wales)



Myself—My Song.
  HERE, aloof, I take my stand—
 Alien, iconoclast—
 Poet of a newer land,
 Confident, aggressive, lonely,
 Product of the present only,
 Thinking nothing of the past.  
  If some word of mine abide,
 Yet no immortality
 Looks my soul for; satisfied,
 Though my voice be evanescent,
 If it sing the pregnant present
 And the birth that is to be.  
  All the beauty that has been,
 All of wisdom's overplus,
 Has been given me to glean;
 In Earth's story clear one page is—
 This—the widest of the ages—
 Virile, vast, tumultuous.  
  I shall croon no love-song old,
 Dream no memory of wrong,
 Build no mighty epic bold;
 From my forge I send them flying—
 Fragments glowing once and dying—
 Scattered sparks of molten song.  
 
  If I bring no gospel bright,
 Still my little stream of song
 Quavers thinly through the night,
 Burdened with a broken yearning,
 Still persistent, though discerning
 Life has shadows, sorrow, wrong.  
  So my life shall be my verse.
 Here's my record, stand or fall I
 Failure may be mine, or worse,
 In the twilight land of living—
 With no doubt and no misgiving,
 Here's my life-blood, breath and all!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

59 sec read
59

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBDDCEDEFFDXGXGGGHAHIIA JAJIIAGXGIIX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,173
Words 195
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 25, 12

Arthur Henry Adams

Arthur Henry Adams was a journalist and author. He started his career in New Zealand, though he spent most of it in Australia, and for a short time lived in China and London.  more…

All Arthur Henry Adams poems | Arthur Henry Adams Books

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    "Other Verses" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/3845/other-verses>.

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