Classic Poem

A LAS , dear flower! child of the morning sun,
Of April showers and spring-time's kindly breath,
Against what odds hath thy sweet life begun!
All nature bodes thee ill. Thou may'st not shun
The hard mischances of this changing world,
Nor 'scape the sad presaging of this sky.
To-day thy gentle beauty is unfurled,
To-morrow in the lap of sleep to lie.
All cheerfully the wonder of thine eye
Looks upward, smiling in the face of death.

Is nature then forgetful and unkind?—
Unknowing of her time to send thee forth
Uncared for, unprotected from the wind,
Whose threat'ning voice stirs from the pallid north?
Or hath the sun, made fierce with Autumn's wine,
Too fondly wooed, too soon, the drowsing earth,
So that she stirs uneasy in her rest,
And dreams she must put forth some tender sign
Of love's sweet troubling in her yearning breast,
And so, unwitting, gives thy beauty birth?

Hast thou no fear? Ah, poor unconscious waif!
No dew-drop hast thou but compassion's tear.
Would that an angel now might bear thee safe
To some sure hiding place! Dost thou not hear
The anger of the coming storm, that fills,
The sky with gloom and shakes the earth with dread,
Voiced in the deep mouths of the bellowing hills,
Wherefrom bright Autumn in despair hath fled
And left the gray trees naked to their ills,
Each holding mournfully some farewell shred,
Torn from the rich robe of the passing year?
No help of mine, alas! can bring thee cheer.
Here will I heap the leaves about thy bed,
That I may leave thee, when the storm draws near,
A friendly shelter for thy drooping head.
Soon will thy life be done, and mine more drear,
That I shall seek for thee, and find thee dead.

Now from the far horizon sweeps the blast,
Distress and desolation in the sound,
Swift through the moaning forest, driving past
The frantic leaves along the rustling ground.
Now on the drear fields night is closing fast,
The shadows and the darkness fill the air;
Dun Melancholy leaves her haunts at last,
And wails along the hillsides in despair.
Far from the fading valley bursts the boom
Of distant echoes, and the darkness reels,
Where sightless chariots, thundering through the gloom,
Bear down the tree-tops with their crackling wheels.
Sheer down the shattered silence of the sky
The fierce, white steeds of Winter plunging go;
Swift on the level of the storm they fly,
And from their gleaming manes, as they rush by,
They shake the hoar-frost out, like moon-lit snow.
Now is the summer as it had not been;
The autumn but a fancy and a jest;
All is but night, and phantoms come again.
The rounded moon sinks in the tangled crest
Of yon dark hill—Are all but shadows then?
And what should I do other than the rest—
A dreamer of the whisp'ring fields at best.

Why am I grieved? What matter should it be
That flowers must fade; that every joy should fly;
And all things change? Why am I pained to see
That good can fail and gentle beauty die?
One violet less on earth! What's that to me?
Alas! I know not; no, in truth, not I.

Farewell! I draw my cloak about me now;
Far hence upon the midnight fields I go;
Cold is the whistling gust against my brow;
Crisp is the frosted grass and white as snow;
Gone is the moon, deep darkness and the stars
Gird now the sleeping earth; and I alone
Must go to battle in the silent wars
That rend the soul with thought's unuttered moan.

Still shall I seek the dawning and the light,
Loth to believe that nature was designed
To be but cruel. Though her ways may thrill
My soul with doubts, and though her front may fright
My longing with a grave which I must fill;
Yet shall despair not mount on hope resigned;
Her beauty and her love are life. I find
More cheer and comfort in her worst of ill
Than in the choicest babbling of mankind.

From thee, frail creature of the mind divine,
My soul is loth to part. I linger near,
Vexed with a boding that is not, and is;
A contemplative sense of wounding fear
Where fain I would find comfort and repose.
Hath God made man a gentler heart than His?

There is a nameless agony that grows
Too burdensome to melt with pity's tear
And I, who bend in helpless sorrow here,
Pained with regret and longing, that, God knows,
I got not of myself—a wild despair
That death should ride upon the breath that blows
Fresh from the sky's far solitudes—I get
No answer. Silence mocks my cry. And yet
Thy faith-face bids my doubting soul forget
The cloud of gloom which closeth over me
With thinking why so hard a thing should be.
Thus am I lessoned by this trust of thine,
Thy beauty's charm and sweet content, which shows
Thy life is sheltered from the blight of care
As though a guard of gods encircled thee.

Farewell, sweet flower! We yet perhaps shall meet
At sometime, somewhere, God, He knows; not I.
But if this life be not a useless cheat,—
A farce for fiends to laugh at, and a lie,—
Then sure I know that in some land unknown,
To which we journey, we shall meet again.
And if there be not this—if life be grown,
Heart, soul and mind, a fleeting dream and vain,
Born of the earth and nurtured by the sun,
A nothing and a shadow, but to be
Whiles that a few short years of time shall run,
And vanish then forever—still, I say,
Farewell! Farewell! It is but clay to clay,
Thou goest now, and I shall follow thee.