Poetry

Poetry to us is given,
As stars beautify the Heaven,
Or, as the sunbeams when they gleam,
Sparkling so bright upon the stream,
And the poetry of motion
Is ship sailing o’er the ocean;
Or, when the bird doth graceful fly,
Seeming to float upon the sky,
For poetry is the pure cream,
And essence of the common theme.

Poetic thoughts the mind doth fill,
When on broad plain to view a hill,
On barren heath how it doth cheer,
To see in distance herd of deer,
And poetry breathes in each flower,
Nourished by the gentle shower,
In song of birds upon the trees,
And humming of busy bees,
’Tis solace for the ills of life,
A soothing of the jars and strife,
For poets feel ’tis a duty
To sing of both worth and beauty.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L22.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Poetry.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/poetry/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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