SOME air-born genius, with malignant mouth, Breathed on the cold clouds of an Arctic zone -- Which o'er long wastes of shore and ocean blown Swept threatening, vast, toward the amazed South: Over the land's fair form at first there stole A vanward host of vapors, wild and white; Then loomed the main cloud cohorts, massed in might, Till earth lay corpse-like, reft of life and soul; Death-wan she lay, 'neath heavens as cold and pale; All nature drooped toward darkness and despair; The dreary woodlands, and the ominous air Were strangely haunted by a voice of wail. The woeful sky slow passionless tears did weep, Each shivering rain-drop frozen ere it fell; The woodman's axe rang like a muffled knell; Faintly the echoes answered, fraught with sleep. The dawn seemed eve; noon, dawn eclipsed of grace; The evening, night; and tender night became A formless void, through which no starry flame Touched the veiled splendor of her sorrowful face; Like mourning nuns, sad-robed, funereal, bowed, Day followed day; the birds their quavering notes Piped here and there from feeble, querulous throats. Fierce cold beneath -- above, one riftless cloud Wrapped the mute world -- for now all winds had died -- And, locked in ice, the fettered forests gave No sign of life; as silent as the grave Gloomed the dim, desolate landscape far and wide. Gazing on these, from out the mist one day I saw, a shadow on the shadowy sky, What seemed a phantom bird, that faltering nigh, Perched by the roof-tree on a withered spray; With drooping breast he stood, and drooping head; This fateful time had wrought the minstrel wrong; Even as I gazed, our southland lord of song Dropped through the blasted branches, breathless, dead! Yet chillier grew the gray, world-haunting shade, Through which, methought, quick, tremulous wings were heard; Was it the ghost of that heartbroken bird Bound for a land where sunlight cannot fade? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VOICES OF THE AIR by KATHERINE MANSFIELD THE VOYAGE by CAROLINE ATHERTON BRIGGS MASON AUTUMN DAY by RAINER MARIA RILKE MUIOPOTMOS, OR THE FATE OF THE BUTTERFLIE by EDMUND SPENSER THE CROSSING AT FREDERICKSBURG by GEORGE HENRY BOKER MARE AMORIS by GAMALIEL BRADFORD |