Classic Poem

My father was a dark-complected man
Who in a moment's joy my life began:
Before him my old and erect grandsire
Burned through, like him, with madness and a fire,
And I am surely kinsman to their clan.

I always loathed the four walls of a room,
And the glad summer varying sun and gloom
I revelled in, — I loved to sprawl in grass
And watch the footless wind-gusts dip and pass
In fields of wheat, on uplands bright with bloom;

And where the twinkling waters of the sea
Washed outward into blue immensity
And then came thundering shoreward skyoutpoured
As if they fled in terror from the Lord,
I raced the sands in naked ecstasy.