Classic Poem

A LACK , it is a dismal night—
In gusts of thin and vapory light
Bloweth the moonshine cold and white
Betwixt the pauses of the storm,
That beats against, but cannot harm
The lady, whose chaste thoughts do charm
Better than pious fast or prayer
The evil spells and sprites of air—
In sooth, were she in saintly care
Safer she could not be than now
With truth's white crown upon her brow—
So sovereign, innocence, art thou.

Just in the green top of a hedge
That runs along a valley's edge
One star has thrust a shining wedge,
And all the sky beside is drear—
It were no cowardice to fear
If some belated traveller near,
To visionary fancies born,
Should see upon the moor, forlorn,
With spiky thistle burs and thorn;
The lovely lady silent go,
Not on a “palfrey white as snow,”
But with sad eyes and footstep slow;
And softly leading by the hand
An old man who has nearly spanned
With his white hairs, life's latest sand.

Hope in her faint heart newly thrills
As down a barren reach of hills
Before her fly two whippoorwills;
But the gray owl keeps up his wail—
His feathers ruffled in the gale,
Drowning almost their dulcet tale.

Often the harmless flock she sees
Lying white along the grassy leas,
Like lily-bells weighed down with bees.
Sometimes the boatman's horn she hears
Rousing from rest the plowman's steers,
Lowing untimely to their peers.
And now and then the moonlight snake
Curls up its white folds, for her sake,
Closer within the poison brake.
But still she keeps her lonesome way,
Or if she pauses, 'tis to say
Some word of comfort, else to pray.
For 'tis a blustery night withal,
In spite of star or moonlight's fall,
Or the two whippoorwills' sweet call.
What doth the gentle lady here
Within a wood so dark and drear,
Nor hermit's lodge nor castle near?
See in the distance robed and crowned
A prince with all his chiefs around,
And like sweet light o'er sombre ground
A meek and lovely lady, there
Proffering her earnest, piteous prayer
For an old man with silver hair.

But what of evil he hath done
O'erclouding beauty's April sun
I know not—nor if lost or won.
The lady's pleading, sweet and low—
About her pilgrimage of wo,
Is all that I shall ever know.