Irish Jesuit Province

A Bard's ApologyAuthor(s): Eugene DavisSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 15, No. 170 (Aug., 1887), p. 480Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20497601 .

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( 480 )

A BARD'S APOLOGY,

y OU ask why I sing. Well I cannot tell You might ask of the humblest one

Of a choir of birds in a summer dell Why he carols to sky and sun.

Reason may laugh at his jingling rhymes, Yet the bard goes rhyming still

For the mould of his dreams, and the clang of his chimes Are not of his mind, but his will!

Ilis songs may be forged in the fire of his brain; Yet, unsullied by touch of art,

l'hey rush-like brooks to the welcome main Spontaneously from his heart:

They spring from the loam of hiis fanicy-land, As buds from the verdured leas,

As the etchings of gold to a fairy strand, Or as foam to the rollingr seas!

Hast thou seen on some snow-crowned Alpine block, W rhere the clouds lie camped, a stone

Break loose from the brow of a giant rock

To be lost in the ravines lone ?

So the thoughts that fall from the rhymester's pen Find ever their level soil

Where a stvgian gloom in a stygian glen Is the guerdon for all his toil!

He pipes on his reed, or char,ts his lays Not for the jewel of fame

Not for the pomp of a Petrarch's bays, And not for a glorious name:

You may afrk why he sings; yet he cannot tell His harp is a birdies lute;

His life is the hum of a wreath&d shell, But his death is to live and be mute!

EUIGENE DAVIS.

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