Classic Poem

I AM sad to-night, and the autumn rains
Stream from my storm-swept window panes,
Like the unconquerable tears
Of Grief, remembering happier years!
And yet what is it, O sighing Soul—
This sorrow thou canst not control?

My night-lamp fainter and fainter grows,
Like the dying heart that seeks repose
Only in death—that slumber deep—
That last, long, visionless, perfect sleep,
Where, when the lamp of hope expires,
Sink with it all our wild desires.

For I muse in a chamber quaint and old,
Of a presence it never may hold,
Of her sun-sheen hair of rippled gold,
And a carven marble so white and cold,
Out there in the rain; but alas, in vain
Love longs for the vision back again!

And about the antique, ebony bed,
The tapestries stir like robes of the dead;
For a ghostly breeze creeps over the floor,
Like the sighs of those who have gone before—
The sweet, white Souls whose footsteps rove
The asphodel fields of the Land of Love.

For I remember the marble lips,
And the meek eyes closed in death's eclipse,
Of a maiden whose sister roses wept
Their dews for her as she coldly slept—
The roses and rueful rue they spread,
Dying with her, on that silken bed!

And the lustrous lilies that shone less fair,
Than the radiance rare of her hyacinth hair,
And the bridal-daisies, not half so meek
As her alabaster-blanchéd cheek,
As she lay in the chastened and sober gloom,
Of that hemlock-odorous, silent room.

And thus it is, O desolate rain!
I am tortured by thorns of a nameless pain,
As you bring on your dismal, demon-wings,
Heart-breaking thoughts of happier things—
And maddening memories that tear
My heart with agonies of despair!

And thus my spirit is sad to-night,
And blurred with the clouds of undelight,
When I think of the dear, dead lost who sleep,
Under the green grave-grasses deep;
And I long to add to the church-yard row,
The tablet of one who sleeps below.