Classic Poem

It is not now as it was then,
Dear Stream, when last I looked on thee;
Thy world of joy, as mine with men,
Hath ceased to be.

'Tis past; and Winter now is come
To turn to dross thy summer's gold;
Each hill seems distant; Earth is dumb;
The sun looks old.

I scarcely can believe the moon
Has filled but thrice since I was here.
King August kept high court that noon,
When I drew near.

His leafy world with wavelike rush,
The quick whoop of the whippoorwill
And the slow treble of the thrush
Were never still.

And, as the breezes went and came,
The cardinal flowers beside thy brink,
In one long wavering fringe of flame,
Did shake and shrink.

The joy which Man ne'er understands
Was thine, thou happy Brook, that day.
How thou didst laugh and clap thy hands
And bound away!

With that, there broke from bird and tree
Tumultuous praise, and in their ranks
Those cardinal flowers bowed down to thee
Along thy banks.

I praised thee too; but soon I sighed:—
Flow on, dear woodland Stream, flow on;
Laugh while thou mayst; thy summer's pride
Will soon be gone.

Then with the forest's shattered lute
Hung silent o'er thy frozen bed,
Thou shalt lie motionless and mute,
Dead with the dead.

Such bodings of my wayward woe
To-day thy waters put to shame;
Here in their changeless pulse and flow
They pass the same.

Some strength is thine which is not ours;
Else, when thy world of joy is gone,
Thou couldst not thus through songless bowers
Be flowing on.

Oh, be it mine, when comes the snow
And hopes no more are on the wing,
Like thee in feeling still to flow,
Like thee to sing.