Lost

HIGH out of Time they fly,
Beauties the poets lost —
Their dreams that soared too high.

Lonely and strange and clear,
Shakespeare’s uncaptured bird
Sings the note he died to hear.

Too fierce for Greece or Rome,
Up, up their visions sped
To this immenser home.

Here, though Keats ceased to be,
And prisoned lies in dust,
His nightingale went free.

Call, anguished poet, call
To these wanderers in the vast. . . .
Does a broken echo fall?