Is there any room for the poet
In this nineteenth century time—
Room for the poet for singing
His thoughts and his fancies in rhyme?
What could be heard of his music,
Were it ever so noble and sweet,
In the hurry of life and its battle,
And the tramp and clangour of feet?
He has fallen on days that are evil,
He that would harp on the strings,
For the earth has grown harder and duller
To the sound of the songs that he sings.
It hears, instead of the cadence
That rises and sinks and falls,
Like the love-notes, heard in the woodland,
Of some lonely bird that calls;
It hears the ring of the railway,
The moan of the wind on the wire,
The groan of the torture of monsters
In the coils of the pythons of fire;
It sees the twining and twisting
Of belts that glisten about
The circle of wheel and of pulley
Like the coils of serpents drawn out.
The ocean itself held downward,
As a steed is held by the hand,
To foam and divide into pathways,
As a share turns the furrow on land.
It shakes as if smitten with terror,
It is black with the terrible breath
Of the things that men hammer and fashion
To be lords of the kingdom of death.
It is naught then, this harping and piping,
If it sounds it can only be heard
As one hears in the lull of the tempest
The lone low cry of a bird.
There is no room for the poet
In this nineteenth century time,
For the earth has grown up into manhood,
And has turned its back upon rhyme.