Classic Poem

From her cloud chambers of the East,
Night—beautiful somnambulist!
Moves o'er the world, and sprinkles wide,
From fingers cool, on every side,
Dew and deep sleep. Moorland and farm,
And the brown hills are tranced in calm,
And the flushed orchard's heavy rows,
Are steeped in slumberous repose.

I cannot sleep. I rise and seek
The fragrant lanes. Against my cheek
The amorous airs their kisses blow;
While thrilling all the dells below,
Within their world of foliage hid,
The ceaseless, grass-green katy-did,
And whipporwill with accent strong,
Rejoice in trysyllabic song.

Like some weird melody that streams
Down the dim corridor of dreams,
In murmurs to the listening skies,
The songs of rivulets arise;
While farther on, the shining river
Winds round the hill with waves that quiver

Like some great serpent's glistening scales,
Drawn slowly through the reedy vales,
To where, with ceaseless thunder-flails,
The shore-assailing seas afar,
Wage with it a perpetual war.

The moonlight's soft suffusion laves
The waving wood in golden waves,
And tips the distant village spire,
Like an unchanging spark of fire,
And from adjacent barns, I hear
The sentinel-horn of chanticleer,
Proclaiming that the day is near.

Beyond the garden's ivied walls
A silver fountain leaps and falls,
Or lifted by the light wind shakes,
Breaks and re-forms, and breaks again,
In showers of pearls and diamond rain!

So beautiful is all, it seems
A picture from the world of dreams!
And yet for all, I know not why,
A sadness seems to haunt the sky—
An influence that the weary soul,
Endures, but yet cannot control;
And musing lonely and apart,
The powers of sorrow touch my heart;
The pale Past rising from the dead,
Waves her weird pinions o'er my head;
Wild memories that long have lain
In haunted chambers of my brain,
Start up! Dead hopes and shapes in tears,
Glare on me from the buried years!
Dark fancies! fading as the day
Floods the long East with rosy gray,
And o'er the mountains, distant, dun,
Abruptly the triumphant sun,
Hurls his long javelins of light that break
Against the silver target of the lake!