Friends, poets, and critics, lend me your ears;
I come to praise poetry, not to bury it.
For the printed Words of men live after them
And their words, briefly spoken, oft interred to the wind.
So let it be Words the ambitious dead sing from their graves,
The grievous faults, passions, dreams, and fears of poets long buried
sink into the incomprehensible part of your mind
from where everything beautiful drips, spills, and soars.
A place no lover or friend can answer,
a place where no Words are wasted,
for they are honorable syllables, faithful and just.
Ambitious before my funeral,
I come now to sing Words immortal onto the willing white pages
to the honorable souls long after me,
pressing their own pens to survive the ages.