The Mother Of Poets. To H. F. H.

A poem by William Bliss Carman

The typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight;
The mother of poets is sitting alone;
Only the katydid teases the noonday;
Where are the good-for-naught wanderbirds flown?

Tom's in the North with his purple impressions;
Dickon's in London a-building his fame;
Fred's in the mountains a-minding his cattle;
Kavanagh's teaching and preaching and game.

Over in Kingscroft a toiler is writing,
The boyish Old Man whom no fate ever floored;
Karl's in New York with his briefs and his logic,
That subtile mind like a velvet-sheathed sword.

Blomidon welcomes his brother in silence;
Grand Pré is luring him back to her breast;
Faint and far off are the cries of the city,
There in the country of infinite rest.

All of them turn in their wide vagabondage,
Halt and remember a place they have known,
Where the typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight,
And the mother of poets is sitting alone.

There they will surely some April forgather,
Drink once together before they depart,
One by one over the threshold of silence,
On the long trail of the wandering heart.

Fear not, little mother, there may be a region
Where poets have only to smile and keep still.
The tick of the typewriter there will be useless,
But there will be need of a motherkin still.