Classic Poem

Born under skies of blue,
While summer yet was new
The singer learnt his strain.

From flowers of summer days,
From scented woodland sprays
Sweet with the tender rain—.

From maidens' lips most fair,
From joy of golden hair
And souls without a stain.

He hath no part with death:
But only with the breath
Of life and living things;

Only with skies and seas
And the June amorous breeze
That through the forest sings;

Only with dawn and night,
The pale stars' mystic light,
The sea-bird's ghostlike wings.

He hath not met despair,
But only the strange fair
Face that filled all his dream

When yet the world was young
And only love-chants rung
Beside the ocean-stream:

What hath December grey
And red-leafed autumn day
To do with green June-gleam?

Right glad is he that June,
Yea, the full summer's noon,
Beheld him born to earth;

For then her days most fair
Are filled with sweetest air
And greenest is her girth

And all the heart of things
With silverest laughter rings
And with most fluent mirth.

When the June-flowers were thick
And shafts of June-suns quick
The poet-child was born

And ever round him grows
Thought's patient thornless rose
In love with the June-morn

And little part hath he
With the grey wintry sea
And wintry winds forlorn.

Born of the English race,
Yet all his fervent face
Sought Greece, and Greece he knew,

And Grecian love of Art
Was innate in his heart
And love of Southern blue;

Yea, mid the asphodel
Cream-white, his footstep fell,
And not mid English dew.

The power to seize and bind
In music for mankind
The Beauty that pervades

The solemn wind-swept hills
And swift white-foaming rills
And sacred woodland shades

Was his,—and power to meet
In wild embrace and sweet
The nymphs and forest maids.

So, being not of them,
No crown nor diadem
Did English hands supply:

England gave streams and flowers
And green-draped fragrant bowers
And wealth of deep-blue sky

And, at the last, a grave
By her sad singing wave
And room enough to die.