Still persuade us to rejoice

Here I am because I came upon a wonderful little portion of a poem, which is stirring echoes that make me quite sure I have read it before, but it has never struck me before just as it has now, about what poetry can do for the human race. It is from a poem called In Memory of W. B. Yeats, by W. H. Auden. Make sure you read to the end.

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

~W.H. Auden

Isn't that just fabulous! To me it speaks, very nicely, of the value of truth, beauty and goodness and what they, and good art, can communicate to the world. Earlier in the poem it says "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry". But making poetry of the hurt was a redemptive act. I love the line "make a vineyard of the curse".

Ebenezer has just climbed purring into my lap, which is a hazard of sitting on the couch these days, and reminded of life's small joys that persuade me to rejoice in the giver of them.