Classic Poem

SUB TEGMINE FAGI.

You marvel I should bid farewell
To cities and to men —
At fifty — and contented dwell
Within this lonely glen.

Long be it ere afflictions give
Your undimmed faith the lie,
And teach you it is hard to live
Where those you cherish die!

While here I draw, with every breath,
Of life a balmy share,
Your city seems the haunt of death
When to it I repair.

So many of its palaces
Are sepulchres for me,
Of those who shared a happiness
That never more shall be;

That when my footsteps pause beside
Some old friend's dwelling-place,
A gravestone seems the door, once wide
With welcoming embrace.

And e'en the living few, of al
My comrades I yet meet,
Seem tottering to a funeral,
Along the callous street.

Afar from walls in mourning hung,
And mutes so nigh the tomb,
These forests seem forever young,
These fields dispel my gloom.

I cannot tell the birds apart
Which in my beeches sing,
From those which last year taught my heart
To beat in tune with Spring.

The self-same squirrel seems to trip
From branch to branch in glee,
That I beheld last summer skip
About the self-same tree.

The night-hawks, at the close of day,
The owl to supper call;
The cricket chirps his roundelay
Beneath my chimney-wall;

And this is why I bade farewell
To cities and to men —
At fifty — and contented dwell
Within this lonely glen.