WILL YOU FARE ON, MY SONG?

LYRICS

Will you fare on, my song, when I write Finish,
Climb the last slope and sight the utmost foam,
Into the world where all our dreams diminish,
Like specters without a home?

Will you pass on, my song, and lightly clinging
To some chance heart, some half remembering tongue,
Share the one dust with all that died singing,
With all that died unsung?

Heat of my heat and clay my clay inherit,
Winged with my morning and clogged and mired with me,
Never a bird falls for a singing spirit
Is silent at God’s knee.

Perhaps some unborn reader lingering under
Boughs yet ungrown, may question with what tears,
What stumbling singer made you, for whom wonder
In what forgotten years.

Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922)
poem adapted slightly