The Quest that Was Fruitless and Long

 Apology
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
by Joyce Kilmer 

For blows on the fort of evil
 That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
 To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
 With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
 Where the great dead poets are. 

 There is joy over disappointment
 And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
 To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
 In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
 For unattainable food. 

 So fools are glad of the folly
 That made them weep and sing,
And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
 And Drummond for his king.
They know that on flinty sorrow
 And failure and desire
The steel of their souls was hammered
 To bring forth the lyric fire. 

 Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
 McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatred of tyrants
 Was so insistently fierce.
Is Freedom only a Will-o’-the-wisp
 To cheat a poet’s eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it’s a noble cause
 In which to sing and to die! 

 So not for the Rainbow taken
 And the magical White Bird snared
The poets sing grateful carols
 In the place to which they have fared;
But for their lifetime’s passion,
 The quest that was fruitless and long,
They chorus their loud thanksgiving
 To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.