CXXXIX.THE POET'S WORKSHOP.
I
The litter of a student's room
Bewilders those who do not know it;
But it is neatness when compared
With the dim workshop of a poet.
II
O if you could but enter there,
Where foreign foot may not intrude,
Of puzzling sights and puzzling sounds
'Twould seem a clamorous solitude.
III
The murmuring hum of line, half line,
Choice turn of words and happy ending,
As from a thousand spinning wheels
Is there continually ascending.
IV
There sight and sound fresh forms and tools
At windows ever open fling,
Which that strange Man, the Artisan,
Receives with boorish welcoming.
V
And heaps of words and heaps of thoughts,
In rows or circles gathered, wait,
And seem but sorry furniture
Except to the initiate.
VI
The words in little parcels are,
By nature prone to nuptial ties,
With some apart, like bachelors
At hand to fill chance vacancies.
VII
And here and there are idioms cast
To which no filing polish gives,
And chief in our hoarse tongue we note
Battered and bruised infinitives.
VIII
There are articulate-speaking thoughts,
Gregarious things, in lowing herds,—
Quick guesses that were never seen
Without their flowing veil of words.
IX
These are the things of longest life,
Struck off in some high hour of mirth:
We know not whether thoughts or words
Came first and foremost to the birth.
X
And feelings inarticulate
Stir every heap of words asunder,
Shifting and shaking all the tools,
As though blind worms were crawling under.
XI
Strange shop it is with littered floor!
Rejected types are strewn all o'er it,
Which one day tumble into rhyme,
As though they had been destined for it.
XII
And pliant supple shapes there are,
Which neath the artist's pressure bend,
Beginning as he wills they should,
But coming to a different end.
XIII
Look from the window! Canst thou tell
The land, the latitude, the weather,
With sun and moon, and night and noon,
So oddly kneaded all together?
XIV
And dost thou ask if habit holds
This shop within her sphere and order?
I say, 'tis built on her domains,
But at the very outmost border.
XV
From wild turmoil and caitiff toil
Seek not, Philanthropist! to win it;
For that strange Man, the Artisan,
Is happy, oh how happy! in it.
