Classic Poem

The world, the world, God's lovely world
Is fading out of sight!
The great cloud-ships with sails unfurled,
Great sails of snowiest white

The skies of blue, the forests green,
That I have loved, God knows:
The crimson deep triumphant sheen
Of summer's stateliest rose.

The purple violet's modest hue;
The lily's silver crown:
My sea's wild waves of magic blue;
The light on field and down.

To see these things no more, no more,—
O agony supreme!
To feel that life is o'er, is o'er;
To pass into a dream

But, most of all, to leave unmet
By mine the eyes of thee,
Dear wife,—the eyes that never yet
Turned once away from me.

This is the haunting horror, this
Must wreck at last the brain:
The sweetness in thy look to miss
Is hell's intensest pain.