To A Poet That Died Young

Minstrel, what have you to

With this man that, after you,

Sharing not your happy fate,

Sat as England's Laureate?

Vainly, in these iron days,

Strives the poet in your praise,

Minstrel, by whose singing

Beauty walked, until you died.

Still, though none should hark again,

Drones the blue-fly in the pane,

Thickly crusts the blackest moss,

Blows the rose its musk across,

Floats the boat that is

None the less to Camelot.

Many a bard's untimely

Lends unto his verses breath;

Here's a song was never sung:

Growing old is dying young.

Minstrel, what is this to you:

That a man you never knew,

When your grave was far and green,

Sat and gossipped with a queen?

Thalia knows how rare a

Is it, to grow old and sing;

When a brown and tepid

Closes in on every side.

Who shall say if Shelley's

Had withstood it to grow old?