Classic Poem

A PRIL again.
Black bough, wet earth, small leaf,
And too much rain.
Clouds hanging low in the skies.
Clouds thickening and forming, to gather once more
Over the earth's dark fields.
There is hunger and poverty,
Confusion breaking like a wave against the shore —
Not a slow tide that yields
To rise and fall,
But breaking, destroying, scattering,
And sending a blind mist into the eyes.

This is the world you left.
Men have not grown more wise.
Hope is still cleft by small despairs.
The light is dimmed
By shadows no larger than the hand.
Mouths are iron rimmed,
Eyes grow hard,
Watching the promise die away,
Watching life yield to difficulty,
And the cold sunless day,
Of bitter unrelenting charity.

And I,
Remembering your sensitive
Quick reach; the consciousness
Of all that drew upon your tenderness,
Almost find heart to say
It is as well you are away;
Thinking of you only
As that spirit, innocent and free,
For whom my heart is lonely.

Yet as the years bring strange
Evidences of unfolding and of change,
Within the seed, within the bud, within the youth, grown man,
Surely the complete plan
Is unbroken, and the sphere
Is rounded, though not here.

Why should I deny
To you living and growth, or try
To hold you in a perfect shell,
Inviolate of memory, knowing well
Your wisdom, radiantly grown,
Is wider than my own?

You stand now shoulder high.
Under what sky I do not know,
Nor what airs blow.
But where life is quick and full, —
Determination rife, or an old wonder
Breaks through, — I feel against my shoulder
Your touch, grown stronger, older;
Only a touch, a bare
Breath, a word spoken low, —
To say that you are there,
And that you know.