Classic Poem

I.

Not for joy and fiery pleasure
Would our spirits ask:
Weary past all mortal measure
With our ceaseless task,
All too weary even to weep,
All our inmost grief confessed,
All we ask is rest and sleep,
Sleep and rest.

Surely, if the world-wide nations,
If these spake as one,
Endless sorrowing generations,
All beneath the sun,
North and South and East and West,
All alike in anguish deep,
All would yearn for sleep and rest,
Rest and sleep.

Lovers who loved on undaunted,
Till they met Despair:
Poets, dreamers, ever haunted
By the spectre Care;
If the truth be told indeed,
One prayer throbs through every breast —
" Give our weary souls for meed
Sleep and rest. "

II.

In the far-off heavenly places
Lo! God hears man's cry
Piercing through the starry spaces
And the untroubled sky.
To the sufferer's restless pillow,
To the sailor tossing on the deep,
To the weary sea-bird on the billow,
God to all his creatures sendeth sleep.

When the golden sun is banished
At the word of night,
When the glare of day has vanished;
With reposeful light
Gleam the stars upon the ocean,
Soothing all the hearts and eyes that weep:
Rest succeeds to daylight's fierce emotion.
Even the murderer God can rock to sleep.

Even the soul, whom on the morrow
The black gibbet waits,
God can visit in his sorrow.
Through the prison-gates
Passing unopposed and fearless
God can touch his eyes with slumber's wing;
Make that one last sleep most sweet and tearless;
Wander with him through the fields of Spring.

III.

To the lark that nestles mid the clover,
After daylong worship of the sun;
To the brown thrush when his song is over,
To the swallow when his flight is done;
To the eagle on his eyrie,
To the robin in his nest,
When the wings of each grow weary,
God sends rest.

To the happy bride and bridegroom lying
In the first long love-sleep side by side;
To the aged, when life's hopes seem dying
And when death is longed for like a bride;
To the heart of Summer darkening
Slowly at the Autumn's breath,
God, from his far blue skies hearkening,
Sends his angels, Sleep and Death.

To the heart that starts with happy dreaming,
When the first long days of summer shine;
To the soul that sees the red sun gleaming
Through the autumnal groves of larch and pine;
To the heart of Winter wailing,
When no corn is left to reap,
God with tenderness unfailing
Sends twin angels, Death and Sleep.

IV.

Grey-grown nations, when they weary,
When their course is run;
When their shortening days grow dreary
For the lack of sun;
Hebrew, Roman, Carthagiman,
Syrian, Grecian, when their day is past,
God removes to Death's dominion;
Even the longest record ends at last.

As the sacred night descending
Covers all the sky,
Its vast purple robe extending
Downward from on high,
So the night of time has swallowed
Endless nations, cities, one by one.
Greece passed first, the Roman followed.
England too will pass beyond the sun.

All the towns that press and hustle
In the modern maze:
London with its stormy bustle;
Paris' gaslit blaze:
All will pass: — till, leaning lastly
From his throne within the heavenly deep,
God will work once more, more vastly,
Sending on the whole earth rest and sleep.