Classic Poem

Sweet graceful cluster of cool purple stars,
Each star a memory of the olden day!
Some happiness that life's hard lot debars
Seems ever hiding in thy fragrant spray;

Some dream that I have lost, some hope denied,
Some joy, half understood, that now hath fled;
Some summer sometime path which I have tried
In vain to find; some heart song that is dead.

Some tremulous soft voice that speaks anon
Through choking tears that ever seem my own,
Unseen tears of the soul — for something gone,
Some sorrow that the spirit bears alone.

Some glimmer of God's love — of bending skies,
That closed about my trusting childish heart;
Some trembling gleam that caught my wistful eyes,
Far in the bright and boundless fields of art.

Some swaying of the veil that hath been drawn
Betwixt the painting of my hopes and me;
As when a cloud uplifted on the dawn,
Proclaims the sunrise that we shall not see.

Some sacred sadness of the long ago,
The touch of lips that have been turned to clay;
The sound of growing grass beneath the snow;
The scent of flowers that have been swept away.

All this and more my heart is made to feel,
By pressing thy fresh balm against my cheek;
The whirl of memory makes my sense to reel
With thoughts that look but have no tongue to speak.

But thou hast comfort also for my breast;
The hills, thou say'st, have caught a tender tinge
From far-off summer lands that love hath blessed.
The sugar tree is decked in silken fringe;
The plume-like willow bending by the stream
Begins to live again the old-time dream.

The emerald margins of the field are shot
With gold and purple gems, set side by side;
And limpid music, like bright veins of thought,
Goes rippling by them with the brook's clear tide.

The wild plum blossoms and the red-bud glows
Far on the dream-land of the distant hill;
And on the green, near by, the tulip blows
Beside the snow-drop and the daffodil.

The beech is tufted, — so thy speech doth run —
The maple all in tender leaves is clad;
The silver poplar glistens in the sun,
The apple blooms again — all is not sad!

I know, I know, the swallow hath come back;
The sycamore and elm no more delay;
The ball-like buds upon the ash are black;
The walnut and the oak still bide in gray.

The bursting dog-wood now is turning white;
The spice-wood buds beside the woodland rill;
The wild anemone, all pale and slight,
Lifts up her pleading face upon the hill.

The saxifrage, the blood-root — all are here.
This song of thine, I, too, could catch and sing;
Almost doth hope awake with sounds of cheer
And sorrow gentlier strikes her painful string.
Still doth the trembling heart half dread to hear
This wanton babble of the infant year
All pleased and doting — with new joys of spring.
The orchard robed in white shall seem, full soon,
A morning cloud close anchored on the lawn.
For now the pallid, waning April moon
Turns faint upon the bosom of the dawn.

Fair bloom, thy numbers I could still prolong,
But to what end? I strike my harp alone.
I can not reach the far unheeding throng,
The Master only comprehends thy song,
And my interpreting shall do thee wrong —
This gilded world hath but a heart of stone.

" All is not sad, " thou sayest? Nay, Love is here,
And Beauty's image hath not passed away;
What matters it if I have found a tear,
And not the sparkling of the jewel's ray?
It is not that, it is the wretched fear
That this my hindered life shall lose its trust,
And I shall sing no song to make me dear
To other hearts when mine shall be but dust.