| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |
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A POET'S QUESTION
What, then, shall make these songs of mine more real;
More tuneful, piercing, bright—miraculous,
As art should be? Shall some high, fortunate chant,
Some song to come, flood backward on them all,—
Over every word in all the singing flock,—
A light, a meaning; a power to seize, to thrill;
A swift beatitude and haunting beauty;
Shall make of them a trouble to the base,
Scourge to the false, sun to the darkened soul,
Help to the fainting, succor to the bruised,
A judgment to the heeding and unheeding?
Or shall a flame leap from the singer's flight,
Making them luminous in sudden dawn—
Bright in the chrism of Death.
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |
|