The Poet

The barren music of a word or phrase,

The futile arts of syllable and stress,

He sought. The poetry of common days

He did not guess.

The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords—

Unselfish love, true effort truly done,

The tender themes that underlie all words—

He knew not one.

The human cadence and the subtle chime

Of little laughters, home and child and wife,

He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme,

Not in his life.