Classic Poem

Heavenly alchemist! that when calm night
Hath driven the fiery Phœbus from the sky,
Riseth in East to follow on his flight,
Holding thy steady, burnished shield on high,
Whereon to gather all his burning beams,
Transfusing them of all their fire and heat,
Upon the parchéd earth to pour them back
In cool and silver showers, thus, in what seems
A soft reproof, making his dark retreat
Full of a grace his presence near did lack,—

Why hast thou hid from earth so long away?
Though absence oft' will burnish rusty love,
'Twas needless to make thine so long a stay,
Grieving me with pretence my love to prove.
I do not love the gaudy, flippant day,
Bearing upon her gay and careless wings
The sights and sounds of folly, strife and sin,
The which she doth in ceaseless stream outpay,
Turning to nought the earth's most lovely things,
Music to moans, peace to a fretful din.

But when, low in the rosy western sky,
The tender planet, sinking, still doth stay,
With the soft light benign of her mild eye
To heal earth's wounds and wash its tears away,
And make it fit to greet the gentle night;
Then, divine enchantress! from some hill,
Whose dewy slope doth eastward open lie,
'Tis sweet to watch, in heaven's dusky height,
Each hollow cloud with silver radiance fill,
Giving bright promise of thy drawing nigh.

But when, before thy sovereign shining form,
These splendid ushers melt unseen away,
Then doth it seem as if earth's face did swarm
With million of kind elves, who, in thy ray,
Could only find a lantern soft enough
To light them at their delicate sweet task,
As with swift sorcery of magic art
They round to smoothness Nature's rugged rough,
Or on her ugly forms bind beauty's mask,
And e'en to beauty's self new grace impart.

Yon cliff that gloomy frowned an hour ago,
Is turned a silvery fair battlement,
Topped with its sentry cedars' shining row,
And all its cataract banner bright unbent;
Where then the lake lay black, forbidding, dark,
Ten thousand diamond ripples light the vale;
While from the forest's depths comes forth no more
That soft but soul-disturbing moan,—but hark!
Sweet, low, delicious whispers fill the gale,
As if each Dryad laughed that sighed before.

But thou, kind spirit, another land dost light,
Than this gross earth more delicate and fine;
For when the eye, the brain's clear pilot bright,
Doth lead aloft where thou in heaven dost shine,
Thou fill'st the wide, unmeasured mind's domain
With fancies fair and meditations high;
Then Envy, Care, and all the demon horde
That harrow up the soul of man to pain,
Fly from the field and sheathe their weapons by,
And frail Content doth wander safe abroad.