Powerful Pens

The pen is greater than the sword or so it’s often said.
A poet’s word still stirs the heart long after he is dead.
The 'Elegy' of Thomas Gray can still provoke a thought.
And Campbell’s 'Ullin’s Daughter' proves that anger gains you nought.

What of the tales of Highwaymen that Alfred Noyes wrote,
We all felt sorry for the man with lace bunched at his throat.
Omar Khayyam’s finger writes and having writ moves on.
But still his clever verse delights long after he has gone.

Why is it John Clare’s 'Morning' or Tennyson’s 'The Brook? .'
When found in an anthology still make us stop to look.
Its true Maysfield’s 'Sea Fever' will cause an inner ache.
In any landlocked seaman’s heart who’s seen a grey dawn break.

As Newbolt’s 'Fighting Temeraire' will always last the distance.
Likewise will Marks Poem Code for the French Resistance.
Could we forget Keats’s 'Gypsy Meg' with bed of brown heath turf,
or John Hays 'The Enchanted Shirt' so full of subtle mirth

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poem by Roy May
Added by Poetry Lover
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