Classic Poem

The night is closing round, Mother!
The shadows are thick and deep!
All round me they cling, like an iron ring,
And I cannot — cannot sleep!

Ah, Heaven! — thy hand, thy hand, Mother!
Let me lie on thy nursing breast!
They have smitten my brain with a piercing pain:
But 'tis gone! — and I now shall rest.

I could sleep a long long sleep, Mother!
So, seek me a calm cool bed;
You may lay me low, in the virgin snow,
With a moss-bank for my head.

I would lie in the wild wild woods, Mother!
Where nothing but the birds are known;
Where nothing is seen, but the branches green,
And flow'rs on the greensward strewn.

No lovers there witch the air, Mother!
Nor mock at the holy sky:
One may live and be gay, like a summer day,
And at last, like the Summer, — die!