Poet, when you rhyme lightly
Do you perceive or not
The poison that steeps brightly
Your quick and fertile plot
And brings the inward rot?
Cut back, cut back the early
The feebly-blooded shoot,
The knife is sharp and surly
But cousin to the fruit.
Cut backward to the root.
Then from the vestige broken
And hacked and without leaf
Or living’s tiniest token,
Upon some night of grief
Will bloom the strong relief,
And toward this consummation,
By thrift and silence fed,
A man in desolation,
With you five centuries dead,
Will turn, and raise his head.
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