Classic Poem

Wet-armed, sleet-footed,
The mad witty gales
Ruin wildly up the hills,
Rocket up the dales:
In their slippery arms
Bushels of hail,
They do their daft seeding
Over hill, over dale:
Smash their crooked furrows
Through all things that grow:
— Alas, that in that green tilthe
Barren hail they sow!
Is it World's End they bring,
That the roaring pine
And the fierce old thorn
Lie down with the celandine?
That the thunder-headed oaks
Converse with the grass,
And the kindly vine
Lies with the Upas?

So the winds return: but frost
Catches what the winds have lost,
Blackens rock-hid moss,
Curls the hardy bugloss:
Feather-like, bird-like,
The humorous snow
Spreads its tender down
Over all things that grow:
Under her cold care
Eggs of cold are hatched there,
Till the lion lies stark
Beside the long-toed lark,
And the tiny curled mice
Shrivel like woodlice.

Pity, pity poor Unicorn
That he cannot now die,
Bow his neck,
Close his eye,
Lay his lovely horn low,
Leave his body in the earth
Where the brown roots go!
Now he sees his heart's desire
Scorched more fiercely than by fire,
All the whole world dead,
All the noisy earth dead,
With his ioicled eye:
Wild he flings his glassy mane
Till its bells chime again:
Delicate monkeys nestled close
In his long and waving hair
Whimper in a mute despair,
Feel the ice about their toes.
Where each shadowy soul goes
Who tells? Who knows?

Cold is brooding on the Earth:
Cold has sealed the dripping rain:
Heavily the ice crawls
Up the dead waterfalls,
Grinds and shudders up the hill:
Cold can madden, cold can kill,
Cold has him by the brain:
He has lived a million ages,
He shall live a million more
With his clear soul frore
And a heart where frenzy rages.

Pity, pity Unicorn
That he cannot now die!
Loud he whinnies forth his pain
To the snow-winged wheeling Roc,
Leaps four-footed in the air
Till the roots of the water-springs
Snap and shudder in the shock.
Now he stands stock still:
With quivering nostril snuffs the snow
Where the palm was used to grow,
Where he used to munch his fill;
Conjuring that he is young
In forests half a league high,
All his horn with grapes hung,
Lotus tart to his tongue,
Moonlight in his moist eye,
And clear star-light, that kindles fires
Of wild indefinite desires:
— Pity, pity Unicorn
That he cannot die!

Now he's Cassandra,
Trumpeting aloud
Calling aloud
Things of fear
With none to hear:
Now Io he, far-driven
By the flickering tooth
Of lightning stung:
And now that Jew
Who creeps, hiding,
That no hill may see
No river guess or see
To curse his misery.

Where the Phaenix makes his pyre
Outcast in night he sniffs the fire,
Watching with unseeing eyes
How everlasting Phaenix dies:
Where Cerberus on the leash leans
And trebly rumbles forth his love
Of Midnight stalking on the earth
A hundred thousand feet above,
Unicorn may not go by,
Unicorn may not die:
He has lived a million ages,
He shall live a million more
With his clear soul frore,
And a heart where frenzy rages.

Only on a wild night
When the winds run low
For fear of the glaring stars
That hunt them all the night through,
You may hear his hooves go,
You may hear his wild spring
Clean across the thorny lightning
And the piled thunder too:
You may hear the heartless chiming
Of his ice-tongued mane
Like a cold bell mocking
Mocking, mocking human pain.