Poems of Philip Henry Savage / Philip Henry Savage [electronic text]

APOLOGY

BE more concrete, immediate to man! So did he counsel me, the sage; and I, Taking for naught the gentle guidances Of nature, who in all my life before Had lived unconscious, leaving much to her, I cast her out; so I forgot the sky And turned my eyes into the heart of man. But poetry is a swift, unconscious growth, Springs native where it may, and ever lives The child of impulse unaware and wild; And passion many times must rise and fall And much of life be lived before the word Spring up to utterance and demand a birth. So was I barren many days and so I doubted him, the sage and moralist; Therefore at last I claimed again the days When I was not so much and nature more, When beauty rose, if beauty it were, and clothed A happy impulse or a strong desire In forms and colors native to the time.