Classic Poem

There is a cypress in the neighboring grove
As black as is the image of my pain;
Whose topmost branches in the moon attain
Such aspect as some ghostly world would prove.
Then vagrant fancy ceaselessly would move,
Transforming all the woodland scene again;
Where yesterday a lawn, now sand-wastes reign;
Where was a wood, today a road would rove.

Alone it stands, resisting every change! —
And I, in agony from life's dire wound,
Gaze on its heights and all my moan is hushed;
Learning that, — memory or hope! — there range
To grow within my life's own garden ground
High things that man nor wind hath ever crushed!