A brooklet flows beneath the vaulted wood. Between the mosses emerald pale, lianas frail pursue its song, others enshroud its bed with shadows moist and blue; a dead birch huddles on its bank; the scarab beetles o'er it skim. Fallen birch leaves, tinged with red, choke that channel dank and dim. Among the mosses a wild and lonely thought fixes my dream with its minute regard. . . . Why, O my God, should things that are so small (a brooklet flows beneath the vaulted wood) with their little life of moving shadow call this horrible despair to dusk my mood? -- Is it because of this monotonous song of a current almost stifled in its bed, or of these things that seem a phantom throng, their sleep with endless sorrow overspread, is it because of life that is so brief, thinking how strait and narrow is our world, that I should see no cause for death's reprieve, nor any reason why mankind was born, save that beyond the border of the wood, like some clear beacon-fire by Nature set, like a summons of this world to light and joy, there shines the vivid green of growing corn? A brooklet flows beneath the vaulted wood. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FRAGMENTS OF A LOST GNOSTIC POEM OF THE 12TH CENTURY by HERMAN MELVILLE THE SOLSEQUIUM by ALEXANDER MONTGOMERIE THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS AN AUGUST VOICE by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ELEGY ON THE YEAR 1788 by ROBERT BURNS |