It is the joyous time of June , And fresh from Nature's liberal hand Is richly lavished every boon The laughing earth and skies demand; How shines the variegated land- How swell the many sparkling streams! All is as gorgeous and as grand As the creations wherewith teems The poet's haunted brain amid his noonday dreams. Falls now the golden veil of even; The vault on high, the intense profound, Breaks into all the hues of heaven; I see far off the mountains crowned With glory-I behold around Enough of summer's power to mould The breast not altogether bound By grief to thoughts whose uncontrolled Fervour leaves feeling dumb and human utterance cold. Yet I am far-oh! far from feeling The life, the thrilling glow, the power Which have their dwelling in the healing And holy influence of the hour. Affliction is my doom and dower; And cares, in many a darkening throng, Like night-clouds round a ruin, lour Over a soul which (never strong To stem the tide of ill) will not resist them long. And all that glances on my vision, Inanimate or breathing, rife With voiceless beauty, half Elysian, Of youthful and exuberant life, Serves but to nurse the sleepless strife Within-arousing the keen thought, Quick-born, which stabbeth like a knife, And wakes anticipations fraught With heaviest hues of gloom from memory's pictures wrought. What slakeless strife is still consuming This martyred heart from day to day? Lies not the bower where love was blooming Time-trampled into long decay? Alas! when hope's illusive ray Plays round our paths, the bright deceiver Allures us only to betray, Leaving us thenceforth wanderers ever, Forlorn along the shores of life's all-troubled river. Had I but dreamed in younger years That time should paralyse and bow Me thus-thus fill mine eyes with tears- Thus chill my soul and cloud my brow! No! I had not been breathing now- This heart had long ago been broken; I had not lived to witness how Deeply and bitterly each token Of bygone joy will yield what misery hath bespoken. Alas! for those who stand alone- The shrouded few who feel and know What none beside have felt and known To all of such a mould below Is born an undeparting woe, Beheld by none and shared with none- A cankering worm whose work is slow, But gnaws the heart-strings one by one, And drains the bosom's blood till the last drop be gone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONG FIRST BY A SHEPHERD by WILLIAM BLAKE THE FUNERAL OF YOUTH: THRENODY by RUPERT BROOKE HYMN OF THE CITY by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT FOUR QUARTETS: BURNT NORTON by THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT ON A FLOWER FROM THE FIELD OF GRUTLI by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS THE PILLAR OF FAME by ROBERT HERRICK |