Classic Poem

Oh, sorrowful and faded years,
Gathered away a time ago,
How could your deaths the fount of tears
Have troubled to an overflow?
I muse upon the songs I made
Beneath the maple's yellow limbs,
When down the aisles of thin cold shade
Sounded the wild bird's farewell hymns

But no sad spell my spirit binds
As when, in days on which it broods,
October hunted with the winds
Along the reddening sunset woods.
Alas, the seasons come and go,
Brightly or dimly rise and set
The days, but stir no fount of wo,
Nor kindle hope, nor wake regret.

I sit with the complaining night,
And underneath the waning moon,
As when the lilies large and white
Lay round the forehead of the June.
What time within a snowy grave
Closed the blue eyes so heavenly dear,
Darkness swept o'er me like a wave,
And time has nothing that I fear.

The golden wings of summer's hours
Make to my heart a dirge-like sound,
The spring's sweet boughs of bridal flowers
Lie bright across a smooth-heaped mound.
What care I that I sing to-day
Where sound not the old plaintive hymns,
And where the mountains hide away
The sunset maple's yellow limbs?