LIKE streamlets to a silent sea, These songs with varied motion Flow from bright fancy's uplands free, To Lethe's clouded ocean; They lapse in deepening music down The slopes of flower-lit meadows, Nor dream, poor songs! how near them frown Oblivion's rayless shadows! Yet though of brief and dubious life, All wed to incompleteness, -- The voices of these lays are rife With frail and fleeting sweetness; One chord to make more full the strain, One note I may not smother, Is echoed in the heart's refrain Which holds thy name, my mother! To thee my earliest verse I brought, All wreathed in loves and roses, Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught With tender May-wind closes; @3Thou@1 did'st not taunt my fledgling song, Nor view its flight with scorning: "The bird," thou saidst, "grown fleet and strong, Might yet outsoar the morning!" Ah me! between that hour and this, Eternities seem flowing; O'er hapless graves of youth and bliss Dark cypress boughs are growing; Our Fate hath dimmed with base alloy The rich, pure gold of pleasure, And changed the choral chant of joy To care's heart-broken measure! But through it all, -- the blight, the pall, The stress of thunderous weather, That God who keeps wild chance in thrall Hath linked our lots together; So, hand in hand, we sail the gloom, Faith's mystic plummet casting To sound the ways which end in bloom Of Edens everlasting! I bless thee, Dear, with reverent thought! Pale face, and tresses hoary, Whose every silvery thread hath caught Some hint of heavenly glory; -- To thee, with trust assured, sublime, Death's angel-call that waitest, To thee, as once my earliest rhyme, Lo! now, I bring -- my latest! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: IRMA LEESE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE SONNET by RICHARD WATSON GILDER A QUOI BON DIRE by CHARLOTTE MEW ODE ON SOLITUDE (FINAL PRINTED VERSION) by ALEXANDER POPE SEASONS (1) by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM by WALLACE STEVENS THE THROSTLE by ALFRED TENNYSON |