Practice Book, Leland Powers School · Chapter 17Life and Song
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[This poem is taken from "The Poems of Sidney Lanier," copyrighted 1891, and published by Charles Scribner's Sons.]
If life were caught by a clarionet, And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, And utter its heart in every deed, "Then would this breathing clarionet Type what the poet fain would be; For none o' the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy, "Or clearly sung his true, true thought, Or utterly bodied forth his life, Or out of life and song has wrought The perfect one of man and wife; "Or lived and sung, that Life and Song Might each express the other's all, Careless if life or art were long Since both were one, to stand or fall: "So that the wonder struck the crowd, Who shouted it about the land: His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand!"
SIDNEY LANIER.