Classic Poem

Yes : though the brine may from the desert deep
Run itself sweet before it finds the foam,
Oh! what for him—the deep heart once a home
For love and light—is left?—to walk and weep;
Still, with astonished sorrow, watch to keep
On his dead day: he weeps, and knows his doom,
Yet standeth stunned; as one who climbs a steep,
And dreaming softly of the cottage-room,
The faces round the porch, the rose in showers,—
Gains the last height between his heart and it;
And, from the windows where his children sleep,
Sees the red fire fork; or, later come,
Finds, where he left his home, a smouldering pit,—
Blackness and scalding stench, for love and flowers!