Classic Poem

AH , chasms and cliffs of snow!
Down the dim path so many feet have beaten,
Need it be hard to go?—
From bitter bread, from fruit the frost has eaten,
From bloom the rain has shaken,
From wings—the winds have taken?

A few gold grains of corn
To plant in that strange soil, some hill-bird's feather,
A broken branch of thorn
From some dead tree where two have watched together,—
These, for the heart's close keeping
Through waking or through sleeping!

One moans with homesick breath,
Here, for gray crag and cloud, where vales are sunny:
What then, if, after death,
One thirst for water, having milk and honey?—
Sweeter divine regretting
Were than divine forgetting!