One day, when all the poets die
and there is left below the sky
Just waters, kissed by lunar light
that gleam and ripple in the night;
let this, for you, be poetry.
When pens and quills have all grown cold
take autumn’s glades of gleaming gold,
where fragrant fires and balmy breeze
do burn and breathe through trembling trees;
let this, for you, be poetry.
While lovers ‘neath the pearly moon
still sigh and sing and sweetly swoon,
with lips, that laugh and love and tease;
when beauty breathes from hearts like these;
let this, for you, be poetry.
When swifts and swallows swoop in spring
and skylarks soar aloft to sing,
while sun sets silent off the shore
and sea does seethe and rave and roar;
let this, for you, be poetry.
One day, when all the poets die
and in their graves the poets lie,
upon the heath, go fill your arms,
with honeysuckle’s tender charms;
let this, for you, be poetry.