Sometimes, when the light and the mists of the day
Settle holy and soft on the edge of the night,
When the sights and the sounds of the world melt away,
And the vision that lives in the soul takes flight,
That feeling comes on I felt since I was young,
Of poems unwritten and songs unsung.

Like a shadow that flits across the moonbeams
Thrills the soul all the more for its dark mystery,
Or the memory in daytime of last night’s dreams,
Like another world under the surface we see,
Like that thought that lives on the tip of the tongue,
Are those poems unwritten and songs unsung.

In the gaze of the lover who grasps for a word
To embody the feeling that’s shared in the eyes,
Or forgotten strains of a song long unheard
Whose sad memory deep in the heart still lies,
Like all the new thoughts that ever have sprung,
Are those poems unwritten and songs unsung.

It’s there in the child as he sees the sublime
In the greatness and beauty of life unfurled,
It lives in the instant, but outside of time,
And comforts the old who must soon leave this world;
It sleeps in all souls though the lyre be unstrung,
Those poems unwritten and songs unsung.

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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an online journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts, and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, Paul Elmer More, and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism. Some conservatives may look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.” The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude, and prayer.

The featured image is “Writing Boy With Little Sister II” (1875) by Albert Anker (1831-1910), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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