"Thou hast not failed; where holy love and truth
Contend with Evil failure cannot be:
Their sorest scars claim reverence not ruth,
Their worst repulse is still a victory.
Thou, well-belovèd, who didst bend the knee
In pure self-sacrifice to meet God's frown,
Kneeling wert circled with the martyr's crown.
"Music is sweet, whatever madmen's ears
Be startled and tormented by the strain;
Sunshine is glorious, whatever spheres
Cloud themselves from it in dark storm and rain:
Your spirit is as pure from worldly stain
As is a moonbeam on a shore of slime;
You sank not your Eternity in Time.
"O wretched Earth! God sends thee age by age,
In pity of thy wild perpetual moan,
The saint, the bard, the hero, and the sage:
But still the lofty life is led alone,
The singer sings as in a tongue unknown,
The sage's wisdom lamps his single urn;
Thou wilt not heed or imitate or learn.
"The blood of prophets thou hast loved to shed
Still keepeth green thy fields, whose costly soil
Is of the dust of nameless heroes dead;[1]
The only music in the vast turmoil
Of all thy complicated strife and toil
Was breathed from poets whom you starved with scorn:[2]
O ever-unregenerate world forlorn!"
- ↑ Carlyle.
- ↑ "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."— Shelley, "Defence of Poetry."
