Classic Poem

The child looked through the lattice old,
And watched the reddening west;
Thought he, “I'll chase that gloaming fire,
E'er it can sink to rest.”

He ran over the evening fields,
He climbed the wooded steep,
He paddled through the rushes dim
Where the hidden brook is deep.

Nor stayed to watch, in wooded gloom,
The glow-worm's mystic spark;
Nor snatch the poppies floating red,
Nor blue-bells wild and dark.

He followed still the dying glow,
O'er meadow, wood and hill;
And faint and sad, and far from home,
Pursued the sunset still.

The stormy clouds, the fierce red rifts,
The gleams of fitful gold,
With drifting mist and dying light
In changing grandeur rolled.

At last, in utter weariness,
With struggle long and vain;
With gasp and sigh, and closing eyes,
He sank upon the plain.

“'Tis all in vain, the light will die,”
The hopeless seeker wept;
And with a long and sad farewell,
Rolled on the heath and slept.

And the red, red glow died away in the west,
And night sank blue and dark;
And high above his still, pale face,
The starlight lit its spark.

At last he woke, with sudden cry,
His eyes towards the East,
Saw flooding all the Heavens with gold
The red day's fiery crest.

Once more he marked, with flashing eye,
Fringing the hills' dark blue,
The broad and burning belt of red
That did not die, but grew.

Thus following some old, dying light
That now has had it's day,
We strongly, desperate, for a while,
Then baffled turn away.

Turn from the old and single Form
We had pursued in vain,
Yet in the region least we think,
May meet the light again.