Early Poet Life Poem by Alexander Anderson

O, how bright were those early summers
When, like Heaven's own dazzling bow,
All the rapt, deep life of the poet
Rose up with its wildest glow.


When the quick, sweet rush of the fancy
Came on me like a fairy crowd,
Or a sudden gush of sunlight,
Through the rift of an April cloud.


Then my heart took a deeper motion,
As from stream and hill and tree
Came a music that bore in its cadence
The sweetest of dreams to me.


Whispers, too, as when swaying grasses
Bow down to the evening wind,
Were for ever thrilling my being
With the touch of the wider mind.


Then the years that lay out before me
Rose up in their height sublime,
Giving forth in oracular voices
The promise of golden rhyme.


And my spirit at such sweet promise
Leapt up in its wild delight,
Like the North light laying its fingers
On the lips of the stars by night.


Nature wept in divinest secret
The sweetest of tears on me,
Till I lost myself in the splendour
Of the boundless good to be.


O, how bright were those early summers!
Never come such moments now;
All that early madness has faded
To a duller and paler glow.


Yet at times, like a flash of sunlight
From the inmost depths of the heart,
The old, sweet yearnings spring upward
That for want of words must depart.


But I whisper, 'A greater triumph
Is yet to be had with thy peers
Than the one that is cool'd with the laurel,
Or a life in the front of the years.


Thou canst teach them in what of music
Is left from that early song,
All the force that lies hid in their labour
Like a saint's when his spirit is strong.


Thou canst teach them, too, that for ever,
Like the waves that come again,
So over the world's rough bosom
Flow the toiling races of men:


Who, in all their fighting and striving,
With hearts that bid them be brave,
Are as types of the soul's high wrestle
For other goals than the grave.


Yet, whatever thou sing, let thy lyrics
Have something in them of cheer,
And a battle-word for the feeble
Who sicken and weary here.


If thou sing not to them as they struggle,
With the purpose of making them strong,
Then thou thyself art a traitor
In the federation of song.


But if there be heard in thy music
The fire and the true sphere tone,
That, striking within their bosoms,
Makes a march to help them on:


Then sing with thy back to those summers,
And the wild quick flush of that time
When thy heart had no thought of its fellows
Or the sacred priesthood of rhyme.'