Classic Poem

Lilacs like purple clouds are caught away
From the dawn-green bushes of Spring,
The onrush of days like a wind on a morning of May,
Wafteth the pageant of blossom with mighty wing—

Driveth the lilacs and almonds like sunrise clouds,
And the blow of the white of the year
In all the syringas and locusts full-tided upcrowds,
Universe-impulse of rhythm made sweet and near!

In June when a heart goes mad with beauty's pain,
And swells to an ache with love,
When the passion of heaven pours over frail earth again,
She lifting her bosom, athrob, to the breast above—

Then go I down from the cities, green though they be
With their gardens and hedges high—
Down to the deep-delled coast of a little sea,
Over the pastures and rivers wing-sandalled fly!

Pasture, and river, and upland, speed me there;
Yarrow, and iris, and phlox,
Marsh-pinks, and daisies, and all the meek namelessly-fair
Lure till mine eyes meet a harbor a high shore locks:

There, set away in a hollow and dreamlike place,
The statelier precinct of trees,
Red Lodge, deep-bosomed, attendeth, abode of grace,
That leaf-hung, lavendered, vision-filled house of ease!

There all the day goes Music on silver wings;
And at night 'neath the leaves' niello,
Words of the Western Isles and Red Branch Kings
Thrill like the strings of an old harp sad and mellow!