Predicament

I

Tell me, spirit of the time,
Is there nothing still sublime
Left for meter and for rhyme?
Is there not an attitude
Left for proud similitude
To assume with gratitude?
Must the habit of the mole
Undermining root and bole
Lose the vision of the whole?
Always " how, " and never " why, "
Categories till we sigh,
Catalogues until we die!
While the power of reflection
Hates the comfort of connection;
Trusts the rudder for direction,
Till a world of separate things
Stills imagination's wings;
Kills the bird before it sings.

II

Without questing from the mart,
Where the hunters sell the hart,
Never, never shall you start
In the lonely melancholy
Of the forests' dewy holly,
Deer that crop the holy moly;
Or the stag that never dies
With the moon upon his eyes,
From the thicket where he lies.
You, a hunter still forlorn,
Coursing rabbits through the thorn,
You will wind upon your horn
Morts for separate mysteries,
Hamadryads slain in trees,
Sprites that spritely fancy sees,
While imagination's notion
Finds in every leaf's commotion
Tides and moons that move the ocean.

III

Poets of the thoughtful rhyme,
Men and women still sublime,
Spirits not of any time,
To your inner ear give heed
Lest the quickening in the seed
Perish as a garden weed.
Lest the shapes that for the crowd
Change and vanished like a cloud,
Cease to be with tongues endowed,
Till no whispering symbols fling
Forms upon the living spring
That gives life to everything.
Think not every crow that caws
Discontent upon the haws
Only chides at farmers' laws.
Though by earthly hunger torn,
Louder sounds a loftier scorn
When his shadow leaves the corn.