| |
| THOU burden of all songs the earth hath sung, | |
| Thou retrospect in Time’s averted eyes, | |
| Thou metaphor of everything that dies, | |
| That dies ill-starr’d, or dies beloved and young | |
| And therefore blest and wise— | 5 |
| O be less beautiful, or be less brief, | |
| Thou tragic splendour, strange and full of fear! | |
| In vain her pageant shall the summer rear? | |
| At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, | |
| Crumbles the gorgeous year. | 10 |
| |
| Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the tale | |
| Of summer’s bloom, the legend of the spring! | |
| And thou, too, flutterest an impatient wing, | |
| Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail, | |
| Thou most unbodied thing, | 15 |
| Whose very being is his going hence. | |
| And passage and departure all thy theme, | |
| Whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, | |
| And thou, at height of thy magnificence, | |
| A figment and a dream. | 20 |
| |
| Still’d is the virgin rapture that was June, | |
| And cold is August’s panting heart of fire; | |
| And in the storm-dismantled forest choir, | |
| For thine own elegy thy winds attune | |
| Their wild and wizard lyre. | 25 |
| And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, | |
| The pathos of thy beauty and the sting, | |
| Thou parable of greatness vanishing! | |
| For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey | |
| With speech fantastic ring. | 30 |
| |
| For me, to dreams resign’d, there come and go, | |
| ’Twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, | |
| Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne | |
| From undiscoverable lips that blow | |
| An immaterial horn; | 35 |
| And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, | |
| Thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet; | |
| O Past and Future in sad bridal met, | |
| O voice of everything that perishes, | |
| And soul of all regret! | 40 |
| |
