Classic Poem

It was mid-June, upon a lovely day
Of pulsing Messidor, and like a bride
The earth glowed 'neath the kisses of the sun,
Who with a fiery torrent overflowed
The desert spaces of the shining heav'n,
And at his smile divine the ocean laughed.
But I, the boy, laughed not: a black-gowned priest
In accents hoarse was blaspheming amo .
How tedious was his face! Meanwhile against
The window of the school a cherry-tree
Pushed boldly up, and with his bright red fruit
Winked joyously, and whispered with the breeze
Strange, secret stories. Whence I soon forgot
The priest and the long rows of conjugations
That crawled across the yellow page like ants
Upon grey chalk, and to my heart's desire
I yielded, and set free my eyes and thoughts
To wander through the window: on this side
I saw the sky and mountains, and on that
A distant curving line of sea. The birds
Singing in thousand choirs flew here and there
Through sunlit heav'ns: unto the twittering nests
The ancient trees, like pious guardians, seemed
To speak, and to the buzzing bees the shrubs,
And for the kisses of the butterflies
The flowers seemed sighing: stems and grass and reeds
Swarmed with the murmurous hum of life and love,
A thousand thousand little lives that breathed
At every moment. And the mountains dark
And the serene hills and the rippling fields
Of corn, 'mid yellowing vineyards and green woods,
And last the prickly thickets and the briars
And livid marshland, all seemed to rejoice
In everlasting youth beneath the sun.
When, how I know not, as if from the fount
Of life itself sprang up within my heart
The thought of death, and with death came the thought
Of nothingness: and suddenly, when I
Compared the infinite sense of feeling all
With that of feeling naught, and seeing myself
Bodily in the black earth, silent, cold,
And motionless, while joyously without
The birds were piping, trees were whispering,
The rivers flowing, and all living things
Renewed themselves in the warm sun, whose light
Divine flowed round them, did I realise
The whole, the full, significance of death,
And was in sooth appalled. Even to-day
That boyish fancy, when it rises up
Within my memory, like a sudden jet
Of icy water, overwhelms my heart.