Classic Poem

Not mine to glow in April shine
A living flame of sunniest green,
Wherein the new earth, half-divine,
Streams up in prayer to the Unseen.

On me a pall of gloom is laid,
A darkling mood, an Arctic frown,
Which clings, though June, the rose-arrayed,
With song would laugh my sorrow down;

And still my heart the darkness weighs
Through boon July, August serene;
But, when the gold September days
Smile from their heaven of sapphire sheen,

A thrill of youth, a flush of spring
Through all my clouded being runs,
Which lightens as the birds take wing,
And glows beneath the hastening suns.

The maples now, which round me flamed,
Are quenched, and glimmer grey and bare;
My kin, whose lifelong joyance shamed
My sadness, blank and deathlike stare.

But I, amid a leafless wood,
Whence all its fluttering song has flown,
Find in the frosts an April mood,
And win content, though late, my own.