Classic Poem

Great winds may blow now
But I will go now
Down to her cottage on the shore,
And drawing near her
I shall hear her
Singing as I knock at the door.

Blow high or low then
The winds, I shall know then
She's happy when I hear her sing.
Then at my knocking
The quick rain mocking
She'll pause, and to her wild heart cling.

And I shall stand there
In the blown sand there,
Listening as she listens too,
And the dark fir-trees
And autumn bare trees
Hush, then shake their bones anew.

I knock again and
Again like rain and
Softly as rain, till she laughs to hear.
" I thought it was rain-drops
That when the rain stops
Patter the pane with tapping clear. "

— In, in, in now!
There's fire within now,
And a voice whose song is heard in speech. . . .
But if that knocking
Were the rain's mocking
And she opened but to an empty beach;

Or if that singing
Were but the wind's ringing
Faint senseless bells hung in my brain;
How would the night then
Lack all light then,
And she and I each listen in vain!