Classic Poem

There is no flame of sunset on the hill,
There is no flush of twilight in the plain;
The day is dead, the wind is weird and shrill;
Amid the gloom the sheeted shapes of rain
Glide to and fro with stealthy feet and still,
And wilder than the wood's autumnal moan
A voice wails through the night, “Alone, Alone!”

No bird dips down a moment in its flight
To fill the silence full of sudden song;
The immemorial music of the night,
When stars are few and twilight lingers long,
Is hushed; with lone, sharp sound of wintry blight,
The cricket quavers near the sheltered stone—
And hark! the haunting cry, “Alone, Alone!”

Wan mists on level marsh and meadow rise,
Like spectral lakes along whose cloudy gleams
Dark boats are driven, unseen of mortal eyes,
Towards some dim coast, some island-vale of dreams;
While on this desolate shore some watcher cries
To friends afar in the remote unknown,
Lamenting through the gloom, “Alone, alone!”

The boughs are shaken in the bitter sky
With hollow sound of trouble and amaze;
And faster in the dusk the dead leaves fly,
Like pallid ghosts pursued through lonely ways;
Darkly I watch them as they shudder by,
While yet again in mournful monotone
The voice repeats my thought, “Alone, alone!”

Night deepens on the haggard close of day
With wilder clamor of the wind and rain;
Louder the beaten branches groan and sway;
And fitfully the voice comes once again,
Across the fields, more faint and far away—
Is it the dark bird's wailing backward blown,
Or my own heart that cries, “Alone, alone!”?