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.