Second-Best

A Celtic spearman forcing the cromlech-builder's brown daughter; A blond Saxon, a slayer of Britons, Building his farm outside the village he'd burned; a Norse Voyager, wielder of oars and a sword, Thridding the rocks at the fjord sea-end, hungry as a hawk; A hungry Gaelic chiefling in Ulster, Whose blood with the Norseman's rotted in the rain on a heather hill: These by the world's time were very recent Forefathers of yours. And you are a maker of verses. The pallid Pursuit of the world's beauty on paper, Unless a tall angel comes to require it, is a pitiful pastime. If, burnished new from God's eyes, an angel: And the ardors of the simple blood showing clearly a little ridiculous In this changed world: write and be quiet.