Classic Poem

The daylong rains are dried,
Cold is the mountain side,
The evening light is pied,
Not heaven's four quarters
Know if the moon be set,
But where green sods are wet
The white stream holds you yet,
Lover of airs and waters!

Soon you will cross the loam,
And walk the pathway home
Before the faint stars come,
And seek your stable.
Your old wild life exchanged
For comfort: all is changed;
For rime-white deserts ranged,
A white-washed gable!

Oh, have you quite forgot,
The flights outbreasting thought
Before this homely lot
Half tamed your pinions?
The mountains and the stars
Were once your only bars,
And where the north wind soars
Were your dominions.

You know the depths of air,
You know the times of year,
To you all paths are clear
And heights of heaven,
The fens and broken bays
Where never an hunter strays;
All cold inhuman ways
To you are even.

And all those mirrors known
That turn the mountains down:
Your flight a moment shown
In gloaming deeper
Than those high tranquil tides
Through which your courage rides
When some straight purpose guides
Its winged keeper.

There's blue beyond the peak
Of Patrick's frozen Reek,
Oh take on breast and beak
The night's dark onset,
Washed in the mauve twilight
O'er some far western bight,
Where islands rest in light
Long after sunset!

Islands that gleam and float
Untouched by voyaging boat,
Withheld but not remote,
Where wave breaks slowly
Till all the beach is green,
Where the great lords are seen
Who fought and loved a Queen,
Armed, amorous, and holy.

Easy to put life by
When friend and foe were nigh;
Easy for them to die
Armed and elated!
And well they died in sooth,
Who found, in fighting, truth
Before old age had youth
Repudiated.

Theirs was the exultant age,
Theirs the ecstatic rage;
And the embellished page
Enshrined the slaying.
For, as old bards averred,
The song goes with the sword,
O wing that writ'st the Word,
Write down this saying:

Love life and use it well:
That is the tale they tell,
Who broke it like a shell,
And won great glory.
But you and I are both
Inglorious in sloth,
Unless our ranging youth
Redeem our story.

For not preserved by fear
We fell on quiet here,
Our friends all dead and dear,
A brave blithe army.
You have your grassy spring
And cloudy barred wing;
And I old dreams that sing,
And memories stormy.

So that the egg be laid
For feathers unafraid,
What matter where is made,
When strong winds tire,
The nest, if we can spend
Our age in peace, my friend?
After the journey's end
The village spire!