Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BLOOM AND BLIGHT, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BLOOM AND BLIGHT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The scene is desolate and bleak
Last Line: To which our sunshine is like shade.
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Aging; Life; Youth


I.

THE scene is desolate and bleak;
Dim clouds, presaging tempest, streak
The waning fields of air;
In sombre shade the valleys lie,
And January breezes sigh
Through leafless forests bare;
The rank grass rustles by the stone,
With danky lichens overgrown.

II.

The drooping cattle cower below,
While on the beech's topmost bough
The croaking raven sits;
The tumult of the torrent's roar,
That, rain-swoln, rushes to the shore,
Is heard and lost by fits—
Now with a voice o'erpowering all,
Now sinking in a dying fall.

III.

How vanishes our time away!
'Tis like the circuit of a day,
Since last, with devious feet,
This lone, sequester'd path I trode;
The blooming wild-flowers gemm'd the sod,
And made the breezes sweet;
The hues of earth, the tints of sky,
Were rapture to the heart and eye.

IV.

I listen'd to the linnet's song;
I heard the lyric lark prolong
Her heart-exulting note,
When, far removed from mortal sight,
She, soaring to the source of light,
Her way through cloudland sought,
And, from ethereal depths above,
Seem'd hymning earth with strains of love.

V.

The wild rose, arch'd in artless bower,
The purpling thyme, the heather flower,
The whin in golden bloom,
Smiled forth upon the shining day,
As if they joy'd in their array
Of beauty and perfume;
And from the heart of every grove
Was heard the cushat's coo of love.

VI.

And now I listen to the breeze
That whistles through the leafless trees,
And to the pattering rain;
Down roars the stream with foamy surge,
And from the marsh the curlew's dirge
Comes wailing o'er the plain:
Well may such alter'd scene impart
A moral to the thinking heart!

VII.

In youth, ah! little do we think
How near the torrent's crumbling brink
The flowers of pleasure grow;
How fickle Fortune's gale; how far
From gleam of Duty's guiding star,
Life's bark may sail below;
What chance and change frail Man may brave,
Betwixt the cradle and the grave!

VIII.

Change is impress'd on all we see—
The budding, blooming, blighted tree;
The brightening waning sky;
The sun that rises but to set;
Health with its glowing coronet;
Disease with sunken eye;
And Childhood passing, stage by stage,
Through Manhood to decrepit Age.

IX.

What read we thence? That not for us
In vain Creation preacheth thus,
By growth and by decay:
That Man should lift his mental eye
Beyond Earth's frail mortality,
And in the endless day
Of Heaven behold a light display'd,
To which Our sunshine is like shade.





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