Laughter from a Cloud :: :: University of Virginia Library

Laughter from a Cloud

By Walter Raleigh with a foreword by Hilary Raleigh

Raleigh, Walter Alexander (1861-1922)

ODE

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216

21st December 1901

Men and Bards!
I, whom my dull brain retards,
Cannot make an ode that beats
Keats.

Yet I fain
Would uplift my humble strain
As your grateful and distressed
Guest.

Emerson
Says the bard must dwell alone,
Social habits make his verse
Worse.

This may be
In the cities oversea,
Boston or New York, or Hong
Kong.

217

Here we find
That it elevates the mind,
And revives the muse to hob-
nob.

Must we shine,
Buried diamonds in a mine,
Wasting rays that might adorn
Morn.

Joined in one
We shall glitter in the sun
(When he next illumines Clyde-
side).

Though our songs
Cannot vanquish ancient wrongs;
Though they follow where the rose
Goes;

And their sound,
Swooning over hollow ground,
Fade and leave the enchanted air
Bare;

Yet the wise
Say that not unblest he dies
Who has known a single May
Day.

218

If we have laughed,
Loved, and laboured in our craft,
We may pass with a resigned
Mind.

While our cage
Is this narrow Iron Age,
Make it ring with many a brave
Stave!

—But enough
Of this complicated stuff,
Lest the critics murmur “Hoots
Toots!”

Some are foes
To whatever is not prose;
Verse, they say, is merely fact
Cracked.

You may meet
Daily in the public street
Men who call a sonnet clap-
Trap.

Here's a health!
To the poets wine and wealth;
Let the critics go to—well—
Hell!