Classic Poem

When I am old, and it is spring,
And joy leaps dancing, wild and free,
Clear out of every living thing,
While I command no ecstasy;
And to translate the songs of birds
Will be beyond my power in words:

When time serves notice on my Muse
To leave at last her lyric home,
With no extension of her lease—
Then to the blackest pits I come,
To see by day the star's cold light,
And in my coffin sleep at night.

For when these little songs shall fail,
These happy notes that to the world
Are puny mole-hills, nothing more,
That unto me are Alps of gold—
That toad's dark life must be my own,
Buried alive inside a stone.