Classic Poem

When the Spring's delightful store
Brought the blue-birds to our bowers,
And the poplar at the door
Shook the fragrance from its flowers,
Then there came two wedded doves,
And they built among the limbs,
And the murmur of their loves
Fell like mellow, distant hymns;
There, until the Spring had flown,
Did they sit and sing alone,
In the broad and flowery branches.

With the scented Summer breeze
How their music swam around,
Till my spirit sailed the seas
Of enchanted realms of sound!
" Soul, " said I, " thy dream of youth
Is not fancy, nor deceives,
For I hear Love's blissful truth
Prophesied among the leaves;
Therefore till the Summer's flown
Sit and sing, but not alone,
In the broad and flowery branches. "

Then the harvest came and went,
And the Autumn marshalled down
All his host, and spread his tent
Over fields and forests brown;
Then the doves, one evening, hied
To their old accustomed nest;
One went up, but drooped and died,
With an arrow in its breast —
Died and dropped; while there, alone,
Sat the other, making moan,
In the broad and withering branches.

There it sat and mourned its mate,
With a never-ending moan,
Till I thought perchance its fate
Was prophetic of my own:
And at each lament I heard,
How the tears sprang to my eyes!
O! I could have clasped the bird,
And communed with it in sighs;
But it drooped — and with a moan,
Closed its eyes, and there, alone,
Dropped from out the leafless branches.

I beheld it on the ground,
Press the brown leaves, cold and dead,
And my brain went round and round,
And I clasped my throbbing head,
While thus spake a voice of Love:
" Rise, thou timid spirit, rise!
Earth has claimed the fallen dove —
But thy soul shall cleave the skies;
While the angel, earlier flown,
Shall sit waiting thee, alone,
In the green eternal branches! "