The Ballad of the Young Man Who Did Not Read Poetry

There once was a boy of handsome brow,

With shoulders broad and square,

He’d lift a load, he’d fix a gate—

But thought verse empty air.

He scoffed at rhyme and scorned the page

Where Shakespeare’s breath still sighed.

"Real men," he said, "don’t read such stuff—

They build, they win, they ride."

He knew of stocks and rising rates,

Could bench two-forty clean,

But could not name a single verse

That showed what love might mean.

He’d heard of Caesar, bold and proud,

But missed his dying friend.

He’d praise Achilles’ wrathful strength,

But not what made it end.

He’d quote the numbers Edison made,

But not his love for rhyme.

He knew the speed of Newton’s laws,

But not his fear of time.

He climbed the ladder fast and high,

By thirty owned a car,

He wore a watch of heavy gold—

But never wished on stars.

The girl he loved grew tired quick

Of silence, jokes, and pride.

He could not name the shade of grief

That trembled in her stride.

He called her “soft,” then let her go,

Then blamed her when she fled.

He never read of Juliet,

Or tears a woman shed.

His friends grew old with lines of verse

Tucked quiet in their heads.

They raised their sons on Kipling’s songs

And Blake before their beds.

But he grew sharp, and then grew dull,

His brow began to crease.

The things he bought could not console,

Nor give his hungers peace.

He never saw how Tennyson

Could give a heart some steel.

Or how a line of Yeats’s might

Say all a man could feel.

He tried and failed to win the room,

To hold the client’s trust.

He spoke, but lacked that deeper chord

That turns success from dust.

He sat alone with whiskey glass,

And screens that shone too bright.

He’d lost the thread, he’d missed the tune,

He had no words for night.

And as his hair turned silver-gray,

He stared into the black,

And wondered why the world seemed false—

Why nothing ever came back.

If he had read of Hector’s fall,

Or Lear upon the heath,

He might have known what sorrow is

When love stands underneath.

If he had read one poet’s song—

Donne, Homer, Blake, or Frost—

He might have found the words to keep

The things he valued most.

So let this be a warning tale

To boys who build and strive:

The man who would be truly strong

Must feed his inward life.

For poetry is not a toy,

Nor simply woman’s art—

It is the furnace of the mind,

The anvil of the heart.