A poet came in a golden noon,
His eyes were bright and his soul in tune,
And he sang a song of a nameless bird.
And never a song of songs was sung,
As sweet and as rich as the lay that sprung,
From the forest-wild muse in the lyrical verd.
An old man dozing and dying alone,
Hath startled enrapt at the wondrous tone,
And thinks on his own youth's minstrelsy.
And his fingers tremble and itch again
And his tongue is lashed in its bed of pain,
To know at last such music may be.
A youth starts up, with his soul on fire,
And shatters his harp for something higher,
And sings of a glory he has not known,
Till his mad soul sinks on the raging sea,
As sad and as weary as spent wings be,
In the guideless paths where his hopes have flown.
And a maiden adream in her virgin bower,
Of her love's bright star and its rising hour,
Hath heard the song, and her being is folden
To the starry breast of a winged god,
In the golden paths of a garden untrod,
Which her soul in the lyric depths beholden.
But the world hath roused on its listless bed
And calls to the ass for his bray instead,
And lo! he hath named the song and the bird!
And the young man lives, and the old man dies,
And the god hath flown from the maiden's eyes,
And the singer is gone, and the song is a word.