WHEN the morning fair and sweet Glimmers through the dusky pane, For the tread of pattering feet, Ah! I list in vain. Not an echo haunts the hall -- Oh, each gladsome, light footfall; Not an echo wakes the stair -- Silence, silence everywhere; They are gone! When I leave my sleepless bed, Passing from the chambered gloom, No red cheek and flower-like head Lift to me their bloom; Only darkness in the hall Lingers like a clouded pall; Round the threshold, o'er the stair -- Darkness, darkness everywhere; They are gone! When from out the toilsome mart, Hopeless, weary, I return, Oh, these wasting fires at heart -- How they burn -- they burn! Passionate grief @3seemed@1 sunk in dearth, But beside my ruined hearth All the anguish, all the pain, Bursts in flaming woe again -- They are gone! When the twilight hour comes down, Of all hours the calmest, best, Hovering like an angel's crown O'er the day's unrest, Whence this alien, brooding air? Whence this whisper of despair? 'T is but Heartbreak's hollow tone Muttering, "Canst thou live alone? They are gone!" Gone! In silences of night Hapless hands I stretch to find Vacant spaces left and right, Vacant as the wind. While a mother's moan is heard, Low, as if some wounded bird, Sore of wing and sore of breast, Wailed above her shattered nest: @3All are gone!@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INEVITABLY (2) by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A SHORT SONG OF CONGRATULATION by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784) LONDON CHURCHES by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES ELEGIAC SONNET: 7. ON THE DEPARTURE OF THE NIGHTINGALE by CHARLOTTE SMITH EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE by ALFRED TENNYSON ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 3. TO THE CUCKOO by MARK AKENSIDE TWENTY BLOCKS by EGMONT HEGEL ARENS |