It was a dreamer, lying at his ease,
Beneath the blossom-heavy apple-trees.
Then seemed it there came near his rose-hid haunt
A way-worn figure, hollow-eyed and gaunt,
With gaze forever fixed upon the ground,
As seeking for his grave with sighs profound.
The beaded drops stood on his brow like dew:
And ever and anon his palm he drew
Across his temples, as if thought opprest,
By bitter memories that refused him rest.
His name was Care. He was an abject wight,
At whom the youthful dreamer laughed outright,
And raised his scornful eyes as if to say—
“Thou canst not fright the sunshine from my day!
Avaunt, old mummer,” then the young man cried!
“Until we meet again,” the Shade replied!
The lounger flung some daises in his face
Contemptuously. Then sudden to the place
Swept a shrunk figure, wrinkled and forlorn,
Who bore upon his arm a scythe well worn,
Spotted with crimson dew. In his lean hand
He held a glass, through which a rapid sand
Slid as his palsy shook it; and his hair
Streamed white and meagre on the troubled air,
So swift he came, as if a rushing wind
Swept his thin raiment to the airs behind.
And gazing sadly on the musing lad,
And studying a parchment that he had—
Yellowed by age and tear-stained, with regret
He heaved a sigh which seemed to say, “Not yet!”
And from afar a ghostly convent's chime
Pealed its recitative—“In time! in time!”
While trifling with a captured butterfly,
The young man spake not, and the Thing passed by.
Followed another Shape, whose moving frame
Of juiceless bones did rattle as he came!
In his dry fist a bunch of darts he clutched,
And whatsoever living thing he touched
Was blighted and abolished. E'en the grass
He walked on withered; and through him did pass
The Summer noonday's indolent, faint wind,
Without obstruction. Horribly he grinned!
Round him the sweet day's redolence of bloom
Seemed overborne by odors of the tomb,
And dying herbs at funerals, and the sick,
Sad scents of wilted blossoms, strewn too thick
On new-made graves. Yet with a kingly stride
August he came, as with a conqueror's pride!
Then said the Skeleton, “My name is Death.
Whatever lives is mine. The babe's first breath
Bears him the curse of being. On the way
That I have walked lies ruin and decay,
Extinguished nations, and bare-bleached bones,
And crumbled palaces, and wrecks of thrones,
Ashes and desolation, wrath and woe!
The man who died a thousand years ago,
No safer is than he whose victor-brow
To-day receives inconstant Fortune's wreath;
For I alone am deathless, being Death
Myself—except high God, whose minister
I am, to make vast earth one sepulcher!
The admonition of the falling leaf—
The mountains of dead shells whereof the reef
Is builded in mid-ocean—catacombs
Of extinct peoples, mummied in old tombs
And mausoleums of an elder time,
Corroborate me. Everything hath prime,
Decay and sinister abolishment.
Consider well then, ere thy day be spent
In shadowy pleasure, my sad argument;
For a sure moment cometh when to dust
Thou shalt return, as all things breathing must.
But the rapt dreamer saw him not at all,
And seemed as if he heard but the faint fall
And dying cadence of the drowsy wind;
For lightly smiling, he but plucked and twined
Grass-ribbons round his fingers; or else blew
The thistle down aloof; and as it flew
Laughed in his happy folly, unaware
That Fate that moment, hovering o'er him there,
Baptized him with her mildews of despair!
Beside him on the grass a cythern lay,
O'er which his fingers languidly would play;
And as he hummed himself an idle song,
Through the green orchard-aisles there tript along
A rose-flushed girl, who cast her gentle eyes
Upon the dreamer in a fond surprise,
And stooped and kissed him; and within his hair
Wove flowers, embracing him. With dream-like stare
He smiled upon her. An electric thrill
Shot through his tingled pulses, and his will
Was captive to that unexperienced mood.
Awhile the beatific vision stood
And watched his passion grow. But when the boy
Yearned toward her with anticipated joy,
She fled and vanished in the woodland glooms.
As fall crisp icicles on churchyard tombs,
So rang her frozen laugh. As flame consumes
Sere leaf, so Love devoured him with her flame;
And like a storm-struck lily drooped his head
As lost love's desolation smote him dead
With an unlanguaged sorrow! Cold and fair
He lay, fanned over by the pitying air,
As loving friends fan one who just has died,
Nor hear his rushing spirit upward glide,
Plumed and disprisoned from this mortal clay,
Out of earth's darkness, into endless day!
And over him to talk at evening came—
Crooning together in the twilight there—
Three moving effigies, Time, Death, and Care,
While secret gladness thrilled each grisly frame.
Then Death flung down a dart and journeyed on.
But Care and Time smiled when they saw the wan
Fair form, where Love, too late repentant prayed
In tearful silence. She but leaned and laid
On his mute lips a leaf of willow-blade:
“Sleep sweet,” she said, “More potent is my spell
Than Time, or Death! It was thy fate. Farewell!”
Beneath the blossom-heavy apple-trees.
Then seemed it there came near his rose-hid haunt
A way-worn figure, hollow-eyed and gaunt,
With gaze forever fixed upon the ground,
As seeking for his grave with sighs profound.
The beaded drops stood on his brow like dew:
And ever and anon his palm he drew
Across his temples, as if thought opprest,
By bitter memories that refused him rest.
His name was Care. He was an abject wight,
At whom the youthful dreamer laughed outright,
And raised his scornful eyes as if to say—
“Thou canst not fright the sunshine from my day!
Avaunt, old mummer,” then the young man cried!
“Until we meet again,” the Shade replied!
The lounger flung some daises in his face
Contemptuously. Then sudden to the place
Swept a shrunk figure, wrinkled and forlorn,
Who bore upon his arm a scythe well worn,
Spotted with crimson dew. In his lean hand
He held a glass, through which a rapid sand
Slid as his palsy shook it; and his hair
Streamed white and meagre on the troubled air,
So swift he came, as if a rushing wind
Swept his thin raiment to the airs behind.
And gazing sadly on the musing lad,
And studying a parchment that he had—
Yellowed by age and tear-stained, with regret
He heaved a sigh which seemed to say, “Not yet!”
And from afar a ghostly convent's chime
Pealed its recitative—“In time! in time!”
While trifling with a captured butterfly,
The young man spake not, and the Thing passed by.
Followed another Shape, whose moving frame
Of juiceless bones did rattle as he came!
In his dry fist a bunch of darts he clutched,
And whatsoever living thing he touched
Was blighted and abolished. E'en the grass
He walked on withered; and through him did pass
The Summer noonday's indolent, faint wind,
Without obstruction. Horribly he grinned!
Round him the sweet day's redolence of bloom
Seemed overborne by odors of the tomb,
And dying herbs at funerals, and the sick,
Sad scents of wilted blossoms, strewn too thick
On new-made graves. Yet with a kingly stride
August he came, as with a conqueror's pride!
Then said the Skeleton, “My name is Death.
Whatever lives is mine. The babe's first breath
Bears him the curse of being. On the way
That I have walked lies ruin and decay,
Extinguished nations, and bare-bleached bones,
And crumbled palaces, and wrecks of thrones,
Ashes and desolation, wrath and woe!
The man who died a thousand years ago,
No safer is than he whose victor-brow
To-day receives inconstant Fortune's wreath;
For I alone am deathless, being Death
Myself—except high God, whose minister
I am, to make vast earth one sepulcher!
The admonition of the falling leaf—
The mountains of dead shells whereof the reef
Is builded in mid-ocean—catacombs
Of extinct peoples, mummied in old tombs
And mausoleums of an elder time,
Corroborate me. Everything hath prime,
Decay and sinister abolishment.
Consider well then, ere thy day be spent
In shadowy pleasure, my sad argument;
For a sure moment cometh when to dust
Thou shalt return, as all things breathing must.
But the rapt dreamer saw him not at all,
And seemed as if he heard but the faint fall
And dying cadence of the drowsy wind;
For lightly smiling, he but plucked and twined
Grass-ribbons round his fingers; or else blew
The thistle down aloof; and as it flew
Laughed in his happy folly, unaware
That Fate that moment, hovering o'er him there,
Baptized him with her mildews of despair!
Beside him on the grass a cythern lay,
O'er which his fingers languidly would play;
And as he hummed himself an idle song,
Through the green orchard-aisles there tript along
A rose-flushed girl, who cast her gentle eyes
Upon the dreamer in a fond surprise,
And stooped and kissed him; and within his hair
Wove flowers, embracing him. With dream-like stare
He smiled upon her. An electric thrill
Shot through his tingled pulses, and his will
Was captive to that unexperienced mood.
Awhile the beatific vision stood
And watched his passion grow. But when the boy
Yearned toward her with anticipated joy,
She fled and vanished in the woodland glooms.
As fall crisp icicles on churchyard tombs,
So rang her frozen laugh. As flame consumes
Sere leaf, so Love devoured him with her flame;
And like a storm-struck lily drooped his head
As lost love's desolation smote him dead
With an unlanguaged sorrow! Cold and fair
He lay, fanned over by the pitying air,
As loving friends fan one who just has died,
Nor hear his rushing spirit upward glide,
Plumed and disprisoned from this mortal clay,
Out of earth's darkness, into endless day!
And over him to talk at evening came—
Crooning together in the twilight there—
Three moving effigies, Time, Death, and Care,
While secret gladness thrilled each grisly frame.
Then Death flung down a dart and journeyed on.
But Care and Time smiled when they saw the wan
Fair form, where Love, too late repentant prayed
In tearful silence. She but leaned and laid
On his mute lips a leaf of willow-blade:
“Sleep sweet,” she said, “More potent is my spell
Than Time, or Death! It was thy fate. Farewell!”