Ode To Poetry

I.

Like arrows launched on swiftly speeding wings,

  space and time flew to shape dark, obscure fates.

Parnassus glorified supernatural beings,

  birthing sweet songs too glorious to uncreate.

From Pierian springs, I drank like panting deer,

  hoping Apollo inspires the Muse's chant,

           that I might drive his chariot of fire,

  to make the skies hum with celestial slant 

beyond the curved horizon's atmosphere,

           and sing legends with epic, poetic lyre.

II.

With rhymes aflame, I chased the godly heights

  like Icarus, and dared the sunlit span;

but sung too high, and flame consumed the flights:

  rebuked, I fell, a humbled mortal man.

Yet oaths unbroken drew me back in rhyme,

  to shape new songs upon death’s shadowed shore.

          Like specters hearing God’s faint whispered breath,

I flung defeat, and misery, in time

 and raced toward hope—and sang myself from death;

         then life at once sustained me anew once more.

III.

Then came my Rose, a muse with goddess hand,

  whose wisdom opened realms unknown before;

Athena-like, she begged my soul expand,

  and led me through imagination’s door.

With her, I reached a place where words fell short,

  where brilliant visions pierced the soul’s inward core.

          Through her bright eyes, I found new worlds to write,

dimensions only the mind's eyes report

     with bright, and visionary, measured lore,

       to trace the lines of undiscovered light.

IV.

At times, dark melancholy gripped my soul,

  and brooding moods eclipsed my poet’s spark;

yet spirit triumphed, rising so ever whole,

  drawn upward by the word’s resplendent mark.

O, joys of rhyme, the pulse of written art,

  do lift the weary and mend the pain-scarred soul!

          Like soaring angels winging through the blue,

uplifting Creation's eternal heart,

     fulfilling joy's timeless, infinite, cosmic role,

       to heal, and save, making life again as new.

V.

If beauty is truth, then Poesy sows truth.

  For truth, in turn, was beauty shaped in song.

These verses, born of joy and pain and youth,

  called from the soul where dreams and hopes may throng;

so, with each line, our heart’s true pulse was caught;

  and through each word, the soul’s deep lessons made.

          If our hearts judged, then eyes of fire would see.

Philosophy and science will not fade;

     truth's inspired of the heart—as you were taught:

       from the heart is truth—and truth is Poesy!

By Ngoc Nguyen

From: United States