O, the rain, the weary, dreary rain, How it plashes on the window-sill! Night, I guess too, must be on the wane, Strass and Gass around are grown so still. Here I sit, with coffee in my cup -- Ah! 'twas rarely I beheld it flow In the taverns where I loved to sup Twenty golden years ago! Twenty years ago, alas! -- but stay, On my life, 'tis half-past twelve o'clock! After all, the hours @3do@1 slip away -- Come, here goes to burn another block! For the night, or morn, is wet and cold, And my fire is dwindling rather low: -- I had fire enough, when young and bold, Twenty golden years ago! Dear! I don't feel well at all, somehow: Few in Weimar dream how bad I am; Floods of tears grow common with me now, High-Dutch floods, that Reason cannot dam. Doctors think I'll neither live nor thrive If I mope at home so -- I don't know -- @3Am@1 I living @3now?@1 I @3was@1 alive Twenty golden years ago! Wifeless, friendless, flagonless, alone, Not quite bookless, though, unless I chuse, Left with nought to do, except the Muse -- O! this, this is hard for @3me@1 to bear, Me, who whilome lived so much @3en haut@1, Me, who broke all hearts like chinaware Twenty golden years ago! Perhaps, 'tis better: -- Time's defacing waves Long have quenched the radiance of my brow -- They who curse me nightly from their graves Scarce could love me where they living now; But my loneliness hath darker ills -- Such dun-duns as Conscience, Thought and Co., Awful Gorgons! worse than tailors' bills Twenty golden years ago! Did I paint a fifth of what I feel, O, how plaintive you would ween I was! But I won't, albeit I have a deal More to wail about than Kerner has! Kerner's tears are wept for withered flowers, Mine for withered hopes; my Scroll of Woe Dates, alas! from Youth's deserted bowers, Twenty golden years ago! Yet my Deutschland's bardlings flourish long! Me, I tweak no beak among them; -- hawks, Must not pounce on hawks; besides, in song I could beat all of them by chalks, Though you find me, as I near my goal, Sentimentalizing like Rousseau, Oh! I had a grand Byronian soul Twenty golden years ago! Tick-tick, tick-tick! -- Not a sound save Time's, And the windgust, as it drives the rain -- Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes, Go to bed, and rest thine aching brain! Sleep! -- no more the dupe of hopes or schemes; Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow -- Curious anticlimax to thy dreams Twenty golden years ago! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE JAIN BIRD HOSPITAL IN DELHI by WILLIAM MEREDITH THE GENERAL PUBLIC by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET THE CHANGED WOMAN by LOUISE BOGAN MY HUT; AFTER TRAN QUANG KHAI by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE LONESOME CHILD by KATHERINE MANSFIELD |