Classic Poem

I'm longing for the forest:
The pathway in the grasses,
The house that on the ness is.
What orchards hold such apples
Deep-hid from eager spying?
What grain, when zephyr dapples,
Can breathe so soft a sighing?
Where could I hope as well to slumber
When bells the hours of evening number?

Where do my memories tarry?
Where are my dead still living?
Where I, while gray and gaunt still,
With harsh, relentless finger
The years my fate are weaving?
I am a shade, and haunt still
The place where memories linger.
Oh, seek not near to hover,
Although the doors are fastened
And matted leaves now cover
The steps where winds have hastened
And dropped their withered quarry.
Let others' laughter carry,
And new floods, wilder, stronger,
Bear me, the moat o'erswelling,
To those that speak no longer.
I sit within there lonely,
Myself a memory only,—
That is my kingly dwelling.

Oh, say not that our elders,
Whose eyes are closed forever,
That those we fain would banish
And from our lives would sever,—
Say not their colors vanish
Like flowers and like grasses,
That we from hearts efface them
Like dust, when one would clear it
From ancient window-glasses.
In power they upraise them,
A host they of the spirit.
The whole white earth enshrouding,
Our thoughts too overclouding,
Whate'er our fate or fortune,
Thoughts that, like swallows crowding,
Fly home at evening duly.
A home! how firm its base is
By walls securely shielded,—
Our world—the one thing truly
We in this world have builded.