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Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams

By Walter Savage Landor: Edited with notes by Charles G. Crump
Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864)

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FIRST VOLUME DRAMATIC SCENES.
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SECOND VOLUME POEMS AND EPIGRAMS.

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XLIX.

[Few poets beckon to the calmly good]

I

Few poets beckon to the calmly good,
Few lay a hallowing hand upon the head
Which lowers its barbarous for our Delphick crown:
But loose strings rattle on unseason'd wood
And weak words whiffle round where Virtue's meed
Shrines in a smile or shrivels in a frown.

II

He shall not give it, shall not touch it, he
Who crawls into the gold-mine, bending low
246

And bringing from its dripples with much mire
One shining atom. Could it ever be,
O God of light and song? The breast must glow
Not with thine only, but with Virtue's fire.
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