Classic Poem

What never is but only is to be
This is not Life--
O Hopeless Hope, and Death's Hypocrisy!
And with perpetual Promise, breaks its Promises.--

The Stars that wont to start, as on a chase,
And twinkling insult on Heaven's darkened Face,
Like a conven'd Conspiracy of Spies
Wink at each other with confiding eyes,

Turn from the portent, all is blank on high,
No constellations alphabet the Sky--
The Heavens one large black Letter only shews,
And as a Child beneath its master's Blows
Shrills out at once its Task and its Affright,
The groaning world now learns to read aright,
And with its Voice of Voices cries out, O!