WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Christmas at the hall cover

Christmas at the hall

Chapter 55: Love of the Lyre.
By T. J. Terrington
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Poetry

About This Book

This collection presents a sequence of poems built around a framing Christmas family gathering that links diverse shorter pieces; it moves between domestic sketches, seasonal and religious meditations, elegies and occasional tributes. Maritime landscapes and coastal scenes appear alongside reflective night musings, sonnets and ballads, while personal aspiration toward the poetic calling recurs in a few direct addresses. The verse varies in metre and tone, alternating descriptive natural imagery, moral and devotional reflection, and narrative fragments, producing an earnest, uneven but sincere portrait of a nineteenth-century poet testing his powers across themes of home, nature, loss, and hope.

Love of the Lyre.

O! I’ll be a poet! I must! I will!
To tune the Lyrical harp,
I’ll earnestly strive to attain the skill,
And naught shall my purpose warp.
“Pray why would you ever a poet be,
What charm is there in his trade?”—
His soul the bright home of the Beautiful,
The Good and the True is made!
He dwells with fresh Nature, mid birds and flowers,
Fair trees and all lovely things;
In his heart is the joy of woodland bowers,
Deep dells and secluded springs.
And thus in creation he walks with God,
Beholding his wondrous ways;
And when he has long in this pathway trod,
He ventures his song of praise.
The rich earth becomes as a heaven to him,
And fair as the sky above,
For he hears the glad bird, and the light breeze sing,
Th’ sweet truth that “God is love.”
Oh! wonder thou not at my heart’s deep choice,
Of the poet’s lonely ways,
Whose task is in music, to lift his voice,
And through nature God to praise!

1852