To A Romantic

To Robert Penn Warren

You hold your eager head

Too high in the air, you walk

As if the sleepy dead

Had never fallen to drowse

From the sublimest talk

Of many a vehement house.

Your head so turned turns eyes

Into the vagrant West;

Fixing an iron mood

In an Ozymandias* breast

And because your clamorous blood

Beats an impermanent rest

You think the dead arise

Westward and fabulous:

The dead are those whose lies

Were doors to a narrow house.