FOR FASTING DAYS.

Are you my songs, importunate of praise?

Be still, remember for your comforting

That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing

Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring

Rubies far redder thrust their eager rays

Into the blindfold dark for many days

Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not

The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due —

Men's summer-sweet unrecognition — grieve not:

Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that you

Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,

Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.