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"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter"
John Keats, Ode On A Grecian Urn.
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I'm never sure how I should take his silence,
It's not by choice, that much I know.
For he is a piper painted on porcelain,
Left to inspire a dreamer in an Ode.
His immortal canopy never sheds a leaf,
But offers no shade - frozen in time -
And as it was written, he never came to life and played
His fair maiden her melodious rhyme.
It sits on his lips as they chip and crack;
A dry mouth, a pipe for melodies made.
Sadly for the piper, I don't share Keats' hope
As he said of his maiden, 'She cannot fade'.
This brave boy's riff will remain dormant,
Haunting and quiet - laid on porcelain,
As I can't help this overwhelming jealousy
Of the notes he'll never play trapped within.
How they reel through my mind but leave nothing -
Not a sound or a ripple of waves,
Whereas mine float a while and decay with little grace,
The dotted-quavers left fading on staves.
I'm never sure how I should take his silence,
It's not by choice, that much I know.
Yet I envy more than words his lifetime in a moment,
In a world in which I wait and watch things grow.
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If something grows, it must grow old.
This is a tribute to a poem that has always stuck with me: Ode on a Grecian urn.
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