This Clamorous State

This clamorous state when words are abundant
And though beautiful, sense is not transcendent
To their mindless blizzard. How such is a repugnant
When once I did say that the obverse was woe?

To have no expression for what I was thinking
Seemed horror and misery enough for drinking
Of endless poetical draughts. Pennies clinking –
For words are the only true coinage I know.

Yet what to do when once buried in grammars
And all the language that incessantly hammers
Through this poet’s brain. What to do with clamors
Which vie for a place ‘neath the dazed poet’s pen?

Laboriously climb to the caverns of Muse
And with your deft instinct go in, blindly choose
A phrase here, a word there, but try not to lose
Your sanity. You will not regain it again.