Granted, my narrow friend, that all

Worth writing about is done,

That repetition begins to pall

And no new lay can be sung;

That everything new under the sun

Is long since written down,

Rythmed and rhymed and made to pun

In Jingle and couplet and ode;

Granted that,(though it isn't so)

Each time a baby is born

And comes to stay on our old earth

To live and to love and grow,

A reader of poetry who never heard

The songs that the poets sing,

Makes larger by one the audience

Reached by the printed word.

And the time for poets to worry and heed,

And the time for writing to stop,

Is the time when children stop growing up,

And nobody wants to read.

But while the world goes round the sun

These things will happen never,

And poets will sing and someone will hear

For ever and ever and ever.