Classic Poem

And so the fitful dream is almost over,
And no to-morrow will arise for me!
My spirit ebbs with the low lapsing sun,
And ere the last faint streak of lustrous gray
Is swallowed up of shadow, life must fail,
And darkness shall be my inheritance.
So be it: I can calmly welcome now
The slow up-creeping of the solemn waves
That come to wash me from the bank of Time.

Yet I have wept and murmured at my doom.
It is so sad to fall in the mid race
And watch my fellows all go sweeping by
To win the laurels that I dreamed might wreathe
In cooling circlet round my feverish brow:
A vain ambition, yet the sweetener
Of many a hard day's heavy-thoughted toil.

Ah me! the hours have perished when my heart
Throbbed thick to the still music of its joy;
And my strong soul, rejoicing in its strength,
Stood on the golden threshold of the morn
And heard the morning breezes whisper low
The promises of a long prosperous day.
I longed to flood the universe with song.
To song I gave myself, even as a maid
Yields all her being up to him she loves.
Nature stored all her riches in my heart,
To spring in flowers of song through aftertime.
The woods had secrets for my special ears,
The waves a melody none else could learn.
The dawn crept through me like a life renewed,
The painted clouds of sunset bore my soul
To spheres untrodden by the foot of man,
And in the lonely night the stars looked down
With wondrous revelations in their gaze.
Now all is over, and I pass away,
My cherished dreams of glory unfulfilled,
The splendours that I longed to weave unwoven,
And my great purposes gulped like a wreck
Whose scattered fragments, cast upon the shore,
But serve to hint of all the wealth that lies
Down in the silence of the ocean deeps.

Yet might I, like the swan, whose death-hour finds
The mid heart of all music, pour my soul
In one wild gush of intense melody,
So that throughout all time to come the world
Might hang in breathless worship on the echo
Of my last words, then it were sweet to die.

O Poesy! my mother, lover, friend,
My hope, my joy, my treasure and my god!
Could I but raise one little shrine to thee
On which might rest a shadow of the light
That dwells within thy deep and holy eyes,
Then gladly would I draw around my frame
The inky cloak of death, and take my way
To the cold region where Corruption sits
And darkness finds an everlasting home.

In vain, in vain! Yet wherefore should I weep
To leave this shadowy region's dusky marge
When brighter prospects beckon me away?
For there are other, higher worlds than this,
In which our quenchless lives at length may reach
Perfection's tireless manhood, in a sphere
Where failure never waits on fearless work,
But all the song that strove for utterance here,
And all the thoughts whose travail brought no birth,
Linked to the sweetness of a purer air,
Wed to the language of a nobler tongue,
Rich with a beauty past all mortal dreams,
May, breaking from the heart, bathe every star,
And be the music of Eternity!

Behold the sun has bid the land good-night,
And mortals hail him in another world.
Like him, my setting hour has come, and soon
Immortal dwellers on a far-off shore
Will give me greeting to their airy home. —
I hear the murmur of ten thousand seas,
I see the glimmer of angelic wings,
I feel a slumb'rous peace, — Can this be death?