Classic Poem

THE earth is damp: in everything
I taste the bitter breath of pallid spring.
Hark! In the air a fanning sound,
Like distant beehives.—Ah, the woods awake;
And finding they are naked, cast around
A mist, like that which trembles on the lake.
The forest murmurs, shudders, sings
On pipes and strings,
With harp and flute;
And then turns coy,
As if ashamed to show its joy,
And in a flush of happiness grows mute.
Alas, the spring! Ah, liquid light,
Your vistas of transparent green
Fall on my spirit like a blight.
The tapestries you hang on high
Are like a pageant to a sick man's eye,
Or sights in fever seen.
Behind your bowers and your blooms
Volcanic desolation looms;
Your life doth death express;
Each leaf proclaims a blackened waste,
Each tree, some paradise defaced,
Each bud, a wilderness.
And all your lisping notes are drowned
By one deep murmur underground
That tells us joy is fled,
Love, innocence, the heart's desire,
The flashing of Apollo's lyre,—
Beauty herself is dead.
In all the valleys of the earth,—
Save for the dead,—no wreath is hung.
Long, long ago the sounds of mirth
Died on man's tongue.
Love is an interrupted song,
And life a broken lute;
Time's pendulum has stopped: a throng
Of huddling moments press along
Untimed, in mad pursuit,
And into days and months are whirled,
As in a dream of pain.
Chaos has wrecked the outer world,
Chaos invades the brain.
The sounds, the sights, the scents of spring
Awake that sullen suffering
Which opium soothes in vain,—
Like the sad dawn of dread relief
That tells the greatness of his grief
To him that is insane.
Would I had perished with the past!
Would I had shared the fate
Of those who heard the trumpet-call
And rode upon the blast,—
Who stopped not to debate,
Nor strove to save,
But giving life, gave all,
Casting their manhood as a man might cast
A rose upon a grave.
Would that like them beneath the sod I lay,
Beneath the glistening grass,
Beneath the flood of things that come, and pass,
Beckon, and shine and fade away.