To a Poet that Died Young

Minstrel, what have you to do / 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 side / 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 forgot / None the less to Camelot.

Many a bard's untimely death / 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 thing / Is it, to grow old and sing, / When the brown and tepid tide / Closes in on every side.

Who shall say if Shelley's gold / Had withstood it to grow old?