Classic Poem

IT IS so glad a land,
It is so sad a land,
Where now I go to make my fast retreat.
Once I but tarried there,
Now I have carried there
All my soul's treasure and will build my seat.

It is so sad a land,
It is so glad a land,
I know not if it be more sad or glad.
No word is spoken there
That can be broken there,
And — grief or joy, we have what we have had.

A blaze is on the hearth,
It plays upon the hearth
And on the brows of some that sit thereby.
It leaps for aye the same
It keeps for aye the same —
Flitting from laughing lip to speaking eye.

Outside a garden blooms,
In pride a garden blooms;
Nowhere so deep the grass, so bright the rose
No blessed hour departs,
Nor leaf nor flower departs —
But never any bud can there unclose.

I go to hide me there,
Since none will chide me there,
And say, " Get hence, for here no part thou hast. "
It is the only place, —
This peopled, lonely place,
That is my own — and it is called The Past.

To you so lately gone,
So sternly, straightly gone,
Without a word, without a waving hand —
To you I send this song,
And you, befriend this song,
Who make great brightness in The Underworld!