Thomas MacDonagh (Томас Макдона)
Of My Poems
There is no moral to my song, I praise no right, I blame no wrong: I tell of things that I have seen, I show the man that I have been As simply as a poet can Who knows himself poet and man, Who knows that unto him are shown Rare visions of a Life unknown, Who knows that unto him are taught Rare words of wisdom all unsought By him, and never understood Till they are taken on trust for good And, all unspoiled by pride, again Uttered in trust to other men. This is my practice and my rule, Albeit I have been at school These thirty years and studied much. I've found wise books but never such As could teach me a single word To set by what my childhood heard. I've studied conduct but not found A single rule in all the round Of sagest laws to set by this, That he who runs to seek shall miss, That he who waits in trusting calm Shall have the laurel and the palm. The singing way and winning way: Who in himself aware can stay, Leaving all memory and all strife, Shall have the things of Truth and Life Around him, as around a child The timid creatures of the wild,-- Shall know the state that Adam gave For gain of reason and the grave. Let no one from this saying look To find no poems in this book But poems learned and uttered so: Life I have lived and books I know, And other common things I tell That me and other men befell. But when this rapture stirs the blood When the first blossom breaks the bud And Golden Joy begins anew, Then in the calm stand near to view The things we saw with Adam's eyes In the first days of Paradise; And these of all my seeing be The light, and of my life to me: Of life with life here and beyond: They lift my deeds the grave above And give a meaning to my love. So to you two for whose loved sake This gathering of song I make I need not tell of right and wrong Or set a moral to my song.
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