A kingdom in the sky

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T h e y   T e a c h   W h e n   T h e y   R e a c h

From the Passenger Seat

Columbia, South Carolina

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THE LOST FOLLOWER

As I have known them passionate and fine,

The gold for which they leave the golden line

Of lyric is a golden light divine,

Never the gold of darkness from a mine.

The spirit plays us strange religious pranks

To whatsoever god we owe the thanks.

No one has ever failed the poet ranks

To link a chain of money-metal banks.

The loss to song, the danger of defection

Is always in the opposite direction.

Some turn in sheer, in Shelleyan dejection

To try if one more popular election

Will give us by shortcut the final stage

That poetry with all its golden rage

For beauty on the illuminated page

Has failed to bring -- I mean the Golden Age.

And if this may not be (and nothing's sure),

At least to live ungolden with the poor,

Enduring what the ungolden must endure.

This has been poetry's great anti-lure.

The Muse mourns one who went to his retreat

Long since in some abysmal city street,

The bride who shared the crust he broke to eat,

As grave as he about the world's defeat.

With such it has proved dangerous as friend

Even in a playful moment to contend

That the millennium to which you bend

In longing is not at a progress-end

By grace of state-manipulated pelf,

Or politics of Ghibelline or Guelph,

But right beside you booklike on a shelf,

Or even better godlike in yourself.

He trusts my love too well to deign reply,

But there is in the sadness of his eye

Something about a kingdom in the sky

(As yet unbrought to earth) he means to try.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Wednesday