Page:Main Street and other poems, Kilmer, 1917.djvu/38

MAIN STREET AND OTHER POEMS

APOLOGY (continued) So fools are glad of the folly

That made them weep and sing,

And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne

And Drummond for his king.

They know that on flinty sorrow

And failure and desire

The steel of their souls was hammered

To bring forth the lyric fire.

Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,

McDonough and Hunt and Pearse

See now why their hatred of tyrants

Was so insistently fierce.

Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp

To cheat a poet's eye?

Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause

In which to sing and to die!

So not for the Rainbow taken

And the magical White Bird snared

The poets sing grateful carols

In the place to which they have fared; [ 32 ]