Classic Poem

No longer fair, no longer sweet,
I parch and pine with noonday heat,
Another day, perhaps an hour,
And I shall be no more a flower.

Thou, happy bird, when flowers decay,
But spread'st thy pinions, and away,
And India's palmy groves, ere long,
Are loud with thy immortal song.

When with her soundless silver chain
The moon has fettered mount and plain,
And not a cloud her splendour mars,
For she has kissed them all to stars:

When lissom fawn and antelope
In covert dell, on cedared slope
Couch, or with bounding feet disturb
The dew asleep on every herb:

When thousand lines of light invest
The lotus trembling on the breast
Of the great stream that seeks the sea,
Then wilt thou sing. O sing of me!

So shall the gorgeous flowers that swoon
All languid 'neath that lavish moon
Know, in thy sweet enchanted strain,
Their sister of the English lane.

How, lured by Spring's soft-falling feet,
She stole forth from her deep retreat,
Her nurse wild March of boisterous breath,
April her spouse, and May her death.

All day she made her upward eye
The mirror of the azure sky,
All night she slept in glittering dew,
And dreamed her morning longings true.

Come back in Spring, then wilt thou see
Some other flower in room of me;
And as to me, to her wilt sing
Of thy long Eastern wandering.