Classic Poem

When last year took her mournful flight,
With all her train of wo and ill,
As pale processions sweep at night
Across some lonesome burial hill—
My soul with sorrow for its mate,
And bowed with unrequited wrong,
Stood knocking at the starry gate
Of the wild wondrous realm of song.

Hope from my noon of life was gone,
With all the sheltering peace it gave,
And a dim twilight stealing on,
Foretold the night-time of the grave.
Past is that time of wild unrest,
Hope reillumes its faded track,
And the soft hand of love has prest
Death's deep and awful shadows back.

A year agone, when wildly shrill
The wind sat singing on this bough,
The churchyard on the neighboring hill
Had not so many graves as now.
Yet am I spared—God knoweth why,
And by the hand of Fancy led,
The same as in the years gone by,
Musing this idle rhyme I tread.

When the May-morn, with hand of light,
The clouds about her bosom drew,
And o'er the blue, cold steeps of night
Went treading out the stars like dew—
One, whose dear joy it had been ours
Two little summer times to keep,
Folded his white hands from the flowers,
And, softly smiling, fell asleep.

And when the northern light streamed cold
Across October's moaning blast,
One whose brief tarrying was foretold
All the sweet summer that was past,
Meekly unlocked from her young arms
The scarcely faded bridal crown,
And in death's fearful night of storms
The dim day of her life went down.

Above yon reach of level mist
Bright shines the cross-crowned spire afar,
As in the sky's clear amethyst
The splendor of some steadfast star;
And still beneath its steady light
The waves of time heave to and fro,
From night to day, from day to night,
As the dim seasons come and go.

Some eager for ambition's strife,
Some to love's banquet hurrying on,
Like pilgrims on the hills of life
We cross each other, and are gone;
But though our lives are little drops,
Welled from the infinite fount above,
Our deaths are but the mystic stops
In the great melody of love.