Classic Poem

Low drooping o'er my toil this afternoon,
With downward aspect, sombre as the air
Which slept around me, echoes of despair
Passed through my thoughts and put them out of tune.
Strong hope, of man the blessing and the dower,
With the calm will to fashion dreams, which rose
Instinct with mental splendour and repose,
Seemed shorn of their consolatory power.
Thus as I sat with melancholy face,
Resisting sadness with a faint endeavour,
" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, " —
That verse of truthful melody and grace
Flashed through my darkened spirit, like the smile
Of sudden sunlight on a solemn pile.

As from her trance upleaps the joyous spring,
Like a young virgin on her bridal morn —
Flushed with expanding glories newly born,
While earth and air with merry greeting ring;
And Nature, strengthened by her rest, is rife
With fascinating purity and gladness,
So did my spirit, from its sleep of sadness
Start into active and delighting life.
Straightway I stood amid the classic glooms
Flung from the lavish pencil of young Keats,
Realms of immortal shapes, of mingled sweets,
Uncloying music, and unfading blooms;
The shadows of creations, which the boy
Nursed in his soul, and watched with silent joy.

Not one, but Legion, were the forms and places,
Laughing and lovely, solemn, and serene,
Which came with all their wonders and their graces
From Memory's treasure-halls, where they had been
Hoarded with miser passion. Spenser's sheen
And grandeur of romance; great Shakespeare's Muse,
Which holds all human sympathies between
The foldings of her pinions; Milton's hues
Stolen from the deathless amaranths of Heaven,
And woven in his own seraphic song;
These to my wakened faculties were given,
An ever moving, ever pleasing throng,
Until I stood, enraptured and alone,
In a strange world of beauty, boundless, and my own!