Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic, -

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,

Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,
Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes

Where thy songs of love and friend

ship

Made the gloomy Northern winter Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, Chanted staves of these old ballads To the Vikings.

Once in Elsinore,

At the court of old King Hamlet, Yorick and his boon companions Sang these ditties.

Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.

On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet's sculptured face,