Classic Poem

Here she lived alone, and from year to year
She saw the bleak belt of the ocean appear
At her casement each morn as she rose; and each morn
Her eye fell first on the bare black thorn.
This was all: nothing more: or sometimes on the shore
The fisherman sang when the fishing was o'er;
Or the lowing of oxen fell dreamily,
Close on the shut of the glimmering eyes,
Through some gusty pause in the moaning sea,
When the pools were splash'd pink by the thirsty beeves.
Or sometimes, when the breezy morns drew the tinges
Of the cold sunrise up their amber fringes,
A white sail peer'd o'er the rim of the main,
Look'd all about o'er the empty sea,
Stagger'd back from the fine line of white light again,
And dropp'd down to another world silently.
Then she breath'd freer. With sickening dread
She had watch'd five pale young moons unfold
From their notchy cavern in light, and spread
To the fuller light, and again grow old,
And dwindle away to a luminous shred.
“He will not come back till the Spring's green and gold.
And I would that I with the leaves were dead,
Quiet somewhere, with them, in the moss and the mould,
When he and the Summer come this way,” she said.