Classic Poem

Ere youth with its auroral blooms
Dispels the tender twilight glooms
Of Infancy, while yet it lies
Close to the gates of Paradise,
No fears the guileless bosom thrill;
The little stranger slumbers still,
O'ershadowed by the silent wings
Of angels, till the morning brings
Music and perfume, and around him flings
Her rosy mist-wreaths, drooping warm and low,
And prints her fragrant kisses on his brow.
Startled from out that dreamless rest,
Through mist-wreaths, drooping warm and low,
I saw her faint smile in the east,
I felt her kisses on my brow.

From the high meadows, dewy-sweet,
Fair Eos with her silver feet
Chased the shadows as they crept
Under woodland boughs away,
Or down the airy uplands swept
Into hollows cool and gray,
Till her full refulgence, bright
As a perfect chrysolite,
Filled the solemn dome of Night!

With a sweet, indolent surprise,
Undimmed by haunting memories,
I saw the gradual glory rise.

Divinely calm and fancy-free
Were those morning hours to me;
I recked not of the bitter root
That bears the paradisal fruit;
I knew not that the serpent brood
Lurked in that Aidenn solitude;
For childhood kept inviolate
The tenure of its fair estate,
Lulled in a murmurous monotone,
As when bees in violets drone.

Till gently as the spring-time showers
Wake the rose-buds into flowers,
Nature wrought her spells to lure
The child-heart from its clear-obscure,
Dazzling the bewildered sense
With daedalian opulence,
Protean visions, sweet and strange,
And swift and subtle interchange
Of light with shadow, too intense
For the sweet calm of innocence:
Soon like the pure and priceless pearl
In Egypt's festal goblet tossed,
It vanished in the dizzy whirl
Of life's bewildering pleasures lost.

Wild hopes came fluttering round my heart
And swept its folded leaves apart,
As underneath those cloudless skies
I wandered with my Destinies,
Nor sought to read their silent eyes.

Thoughts for pain too dear — too deep
For pleasure — caused the heart to weep
Tears that, steeped in fragrance, fell
Like dew-drops from the lily's bell.

Dream followed dream: and still the day
Floated on golden wings away.

Then, while each little woodland bird
One sweet note forever sung,
My heart on one bewildering word
Its wealth of morning music flung:
All the glory and the gloom —
All the passion and the power —
All the mystic bale and bloom
Of its high imperial dower.

Like the sole phaenix in his perfumed nest,
LovEreigned within my heart a sovran guest, —
Reigned in my heart of hearts — the throned lord
Of its young life, unquestioned and adored;
Folding its fragrant altar-gifts in flame
That made the summer heavens look wan and pale,
Forestalling life's fair heritage and claim
On earthly hope till hope waxed cold and stale,
Bankrupt and blighted with the fond excess
Of a too rare and costly happiness,
A flame that earth's calm joys too proudly spurned,
And left but ashes where its altars burned.

Yet, like the fabled Greek, superbly bold,
Who on Jove's awful countenance would gaze,
Pining immortal beauty to behold,
Consumed beneath the lightning of its rays,
My conscious heart a willing fate had sought,
Undaunted by the pangs its triumphs bought;
Content love's mortal penalties to share,
And, for a dream so sweet, a dreadless doom to dare.

I trod o'er meads of asphodel,
I walked the hall of dreams,
And gathered sweeter flowers than fell
By Enna's fabled streams.

Every wind of morning bore
Music from some haunted shore,
Some fairy island o'er the seas,
Insphered in Orient fantasies.

Every cloud that floated by
Veiled beneath its silver wing
Missives from a world more fair
Than the Poet's dream of spring.

I sought the holy wells of song
Love's wild enchantments to prolong,
And walked as in a waking trance
The wonder-land of old romance.

Sometimes to a triumph march
Throbbed the life-pulse, warm and high;
Sometimes tolled in silver time
To a haunting melody,
Like a holy matin bell
Chiming in a far chapelle:
Now trembling to a cadence sweet
As the clear and silver beat
Of fairy footsteps, or the fall
Of fountains in a marble hall;
Now as to an echoing horn,
Far through moonlit forests borne,
Sad and rhythmically slow,
Moved to grand adagio.

Dream followed dream: the horizon lay
A line of silver far away;
The trees soared far into the blue,
The rose-cups dripped with morning dew,
And still the level life-path wound
Away, away, o'er flowery ground.