Fame by Leonard Bacon - Poems | Academy of American Poets

As I came down into the Place of Spain,
Above the motors tooting in the streets
I heard a voice that asked, “Well, who was Keats?”
In the best accent of Nebraska’s plain.
A thin but rigid female, who in vain
Perused her Baedeker’s close-printed sheets,
Answered: “An Irish Poet,” scattering sweets
Of information to the Vast Inane.

Who was he? A voice, forgotten in some quarters
Apparently. The mortal lyric cry
Stilled by the house where the man came to die;
A lost identity of long ago;
Music and love quenched by the many waters.
Who was he? Do the critics really know?

Credit

Author

Leonard Bacon

Leonard Bacon, a poet, translator, critic, and professor, was born in 1887 in Solvay, New York. He came from a family of Congregationalist ministers, including the clergymen relatives for which he was named: his great-grandfather Reverend Leonard Bacon, a leader of the colonization movement in New Haven, and his grandfather, Leonard Woolsey Bacon. The younger Bacon studied at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, then at Yale University, an institution to which his family was deeply connected. Five of his relatives served as members of the faculty.

Date Published

01/01/1927