- My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
- I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
- Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
- Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.
- I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
- From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
- Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
- The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.
- The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;
- The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;
- The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;
- Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.
- The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,
- And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;
- The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel
- The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.
- These will I sing, and if one of you linger
- Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,
- And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
- Saying: "It's human-true -- it hits me right";
- Then will I count this loving toil well spent;
- Then will I dream awhile -- content, content.