Classic Poem

A summer day. A bank of cloud,
Low in the far northwest,
Which, dim and hazy, sullen browed,
It hides as yet, with misty shroud,
The passion in its breast.

The lazy hours slowly creep;
All breathless is the noon;
And still in solemn, stately sweep,
Uprolls the cloud, with growlings deep
" The storm is coming soon. "

Another hour. Thick darkness falls,
And rosy cheeks grow pale,
The fearful roar all hearts appalls,
And green are those advancing walls,
Warning of wind and hail.

Louder, yet louder; crash and roar,
And blinding sheets of fire —
While forks and chains go streaking o'er
That livid green; which, more and more,
Bodeth of tempest dire.

The awful storm bursts forth at last,
In wind, and hail and rain.
Like jagged stones from cannon cast,
The blocks of ice come crashing fast
Through many a shivered pane.

The jagged ice, the flood that pours,
The flash, and roar, and hiss;
The flying glass, the rattling doors,
The dripping walls, the streaming floors —
A fearful scene is this!


At last the storm is spent and o'er;
The cloud has rolled away.
At shattered window, battered door,
We stand and look abroad once more,
With faces of dismay.

The teeming earth that smiled at morn,
Her fair face fresh from sleep;
Now lies with garments frayed and torn,
Here strewn with wrecks the floods have borne,
There furrowed wide and deep,

Through leafeless trees an hour ago
Fruit-laden, glossy green;
The damp wind passes, sighing low;
The fruit lies heaped like winter snow,
With dead birds wedged between.

Gardens, with flowers rich and rare,
Of leaf and stalk are reft,
As if some giant, passing there,
Had wielded broom and swept them bare,
And ne'er a green thing left.

The saddest yet is still untold,
For, more than all, we mourn —
More than bare trees or flowers of gold,
Of green fruit crushed in sodden mould —
The ruined fields of corn.

At noon in solid ranks they stood,
With plumes and pennons gay:
All close and thick as jungle wood,
Each great ear wrapped in bright green hood,
A brave and rich array.

But now, Oh now! the plumes are shorn;
The bruised stalks leafless stand,
The massive ears with hoods all torn,
Hang drooping, battered and forlorn,
Or strew the sodden land.