Classic Poem

How often, in my childish days,
Pausing amid her many cares,
My mother used to tell to me
The simple tale of Cowper's hares.

The slender history never tired,
Each pretty puss seemed half my own,
And real as the sounds I knew
Their sad and kindly playmate's tone.

And, later, with the lines he wrote
His mother, in as hearty grief,
The tears poured down my little face
To run with his along the leaf.

And so, you see, I always loved
The gentle poet; and if word,
Ever so idle, went abroad
Concerning Cowper, that I heard.

Thus, it may be, this story came;
And if the whole be hardly true,
Yet one so like it surely chanced
That, as I heard, I tell it you.

Sweet clouded soul! But as the pearl
In heaven's great gate, whose clouded light
Was heaven's own lustre filtering through—
A soul was never made more white!

And yet he thought that soul was dark
With foul desires, and soiled with sin,
And when he swept and garnished it
There seven devils entered in.

And far in black eternities,
While wild cold tremors o'er him ran,
He saw himself engulfed and lost,
Lost to the love of God or man!

He who loved God with childish faith,
Who loved his fellow-man with joy,
Who passed his long quiescent days
In every innocent employ!

But still the blur upon the brain
Compelled him with the monstrous boast:
His the unpardonable sin,
The sin against the Holy Ghost!

Friends might be pitying, tender tears
Dear Mary Unwin's eyes might dim—
They, first of all, the vile truth known,
Anathemas must hurl at him!

Malignant blur! It wrapped the world
At morning. And when night was deep
He shuddered, by a flaming sword
Shut from the paradise of sleep.

He walked his garden, turned his books,
In an impenetrable gloom
The sunshine seemed a winding-sheet,
A child's light laugh a sound of doom.

And could there gladness be with those
Of death and foul decay the slaves?
They who were happy only danced
Where roses masked the yawning graves!

Naught in the world he saw but death,
And after death—ah, what fell curse
Had withered love in that dark power,
The power that ruled the universe!

As when the moon swims large and low
O'er level lands, and up her height
Come creeping vapors from the marsh
To veil her melancholy light—

Then slowly steals a greater gloom,
Earth's mightier shadow sweeping there,
Till swoons the orb in blind eclipse—
So his dejection was despair.

Despair! And wherefore live to feel
Its pangs, when everlasting sleep
Hung but one moment's reach away—
That sleep so cold, so white, so deep!

No, no, he would not longer bear
This loathsome agony of fear!
The horrors of the vast unknown—
Those horrors were about him here!

Where softly flowed the river Ouse
Through dell and dingle sparkling chill,
With willows whitening to the wind,
The pools were deep, the pools were still.

In some dark pool were place for him,
Were peace, profoundest peace, at last,
Were rest beneath the placid flow—
His rest, before the night were past!

With eager haste he hailed his man,
Mounted beside him in the chaise;
Nerved as the bow-string to the shaft
That night he went his devious ways.

A mile or two of lonely lane,
A turning, and the river crept
Glimmering beside the path he knew,
And on its breast the lilies slept.

The night was dark, the wind was up
Chasing the stars with cloud on cloud,
Now stripped a great sky bare, and now
Hung all the heavens in a shroud.

But he nor fleece of stars nor cloud
Beheld, nor heard the shrill wind blow;
Forces of night and evil, he
Defied them, stupefied with woe.

He did not heed the fragrant way
Where wanton bramble-roses grew,
Now where great flowering branches stretched
And brushed his face with showers of dew.

And when from sheltered nightingales
Far off the bubbling flute-note stole
On long swells of the wind, he heard
Only the cry of some lost soul.

Naught of the wonted way he marked;
He saw no turning of the lane,
Nor constellations wheeling high—
Lost in his revery of pain.

He only saw the dusky pool
With lilies floating on its breast,
Where stars flashed, too, with breaking rays.
Where all things bade to dreamless rest.

How slumberously above would move
Those waters dallying on their way;
How cool the quiet depths should be
After this torrid fever's sway!

The old horse kept his moping pace,
The man beside him dozed once more;
He had not thought the way so far—
Had the lane left the river-shore?

Again in moody musings plunged,
He noted not the winding road
Far from the reedy river-bed
Where Ouse among his rushes flowed.

The wind went down: from distant farms
The cocks crowed with their rousing cheer;
A silver ether swathed the east
Where one great star hung like a tear.

A bird half warbled in his sleep,
Another answered him and woke,
And all the leafy countryside
To clangor of wild music broke;

And odors met him full of balm,
Pallid he saw the fainting blue,
Peace in the sky of rosy gold—
And in his heart what strange peace, too!

For as the way through hedgerows wound,
The way familiar grown of late,
In rainbows glowed his garden-side,
The old horse paused before his gate!

All night, in vain, he sought the pool
Where still the glimmering river flowed,
All night in vain pursued his end,
Purblind along the circling road,

All night he sought with sense absorbed
His solemn tryst with death to keep,
All night some power withstood—that power
Which holds the planets where they sweep!

Was it, indeed, that mighty power
Which sways the stars and feeds the sun,
That led this poor bewildered man
Ere he was utterly undone?

He thought so. And he gathered hope,
And life's pale flame streamed up anew.
If other power—I cannot name
Its sweet puissance. Pray can you?