Inner Meanings

The flourish of a graceful pen
     That traces an unmeaning scroll,
Eagle or swan, ye hardly ken,
     Is fancy’s song without the soul.

The gurgle of a sunny brook
     Is not so idle,—sent to pay
Liege service to some flowery nook,
     It leaps the pebbles on its way.

So making music of its task,
     Beauty of hindrance overcome;
Why carol of its charms, I ask,
     And leave its deeper meaning dumb.

The frolic songs of bobolink
     Come freighted o’er the ferny lea
With household care that will not shrink
     From duty, in his tipsy glee.

Ah, Poet! thrilled with sensuous dreams,
     Forget not the diviner sense
In all things fair, whose fervid beams
     Make even their beauty more intense.

Strike, if thou canst, the living lyre
     Whose chords are sunbeams, and whose notes
Are flower and bird and love’s white fire,—
     But catch the soul that round thee floats.

Be drunk with Nature’s loveliness,
     And not with wine; be stung with thrills
Of beauty’s rapture, but no less
     Hold fast the calm thought it instills.

Become the high interpreter
     Of what is felt, and seen, and heard;
For all things, dumb or vocal here,
     Are signs to spell the Eternal Word.