Classic Poem

The whitening orchard scarcely stirs,
While through it roam and sing
Those mild melodious pillagers,
The breezes of late Spring.

In meadowy reaches, far and wide,
No balmier May was born;
The expectant world is like a bride
Upon her wedding morn!

All nature speaks its joy profuse,
To see chill hours retreat,
Save, in their lethargy obtuse,
These grim rocks at my feet.

Here timid mosses film their gray;
Here starts the unfolding fern;
But still they bide, from day to day,
Impenetrably stern.

Thus girt with life's exuberant grace,
Yet thus from life exempt,
In their stolidity I trace
The inertness of contempt.

With scorn they seem to brood, while these
Ephemeral changes pass,—
The inconstant birds, the transient trees,
The perishable grass.

“Light waifs,” perchance their souls avow,
“What kinship can you claim
With us that stood as we stand now
Ere Egypt had a name?”