Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Wapentake lyrics

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;   Not as a knight, who on the listed field   Of tourney touched his adversary's shield   In token of defiance, but in sign Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,   In English song; nor will I keep concealed,   And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,   My admiration for thy verse divine. Not of the howling dervishes of song,   Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,   Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,   To thee our love and our allegiance,   For thy allegiance to the poet's art.