Classic Poem

What bird can sing when storms are in the sky,
When flowers and verdure from the turf are gone?
How can the nighted traveller carol on
When winds are loud, and lightning flashes by?
How can the lip smile, when all prospects die,
When earth is but one cold and lifeless waste?
And how can pleasure brighten up the eye,
When hope has, like a lovely night-dream, passed, —
When days are lingering onward dark and slow,
And suns arise, but brightly shine no more, —
When gloom has covered all that charmed below,
And nothing lures us on, — when life is o'er?
The heart has then no fountain of delight,
The eye has then no spirit to illume;
A worse than death has withered with its blight
All hope's fair visions, and all fancy's bloom.