Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PLAINT OF THE WILD FLOWER, by JOHN SAVAGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PLAINT OF THE WILD FLOWER, by                    
First Line: I was not born for the town
Last Line: Where I was born.
Subject(s): Flowers


I WAS not born for the town,
Where all that's pure and humble's trodden down:
My home is in the woods --
The over-arching, cloistered solitudes;
Where the full-toned psalm
Of Nature at her matin broke the calm
Of cloudy pillowed Night
With calmness made more voluble by light:
And where the Minstrel Noon
Made every young stem spring as to a tune;
Ay, where our joys were led
To suit the fluted measures of the orb o'erhead.
I am forlorn
Here 'mid the waking jargon of the day;
Noon brings no light, no song of birds at play;
My plume is in the dust! I pine and pray
For the old woods, the grand old woods away
Where I was born.

Here I am dying; I want room --
Room for the air of Heaven, for the bloom
Of never-tiring nature; room
For the verdure-freighted clouds, and thunder-boom
That sounds relief to drouthy earth;
Room for the sunlight and th' exhaustless mirth
Of laughing July's breeze,
Untangling the meshes of the branching trees;
Room for cool night and ruddy day,
For peace, for health -- aught naturally gay;
Room to take vital breath,
And look on anything not painted death!
I am forlorn --
I, who from my earliest golden age,
Sat by the regal Oak's foot, like a page,
And, mantled in moss, at the close of the day
Slept by my prince, in the woods far away
Where I was born.

Here is no room -- no room
For e'en a flower's life; nothing but a tomb.
O forest gods! look down,
And shield your other offspring from the town.
Ah! would that I could die
Where o'er my wreck the forest flowers might sigh,
And clustering shrubs anear
Weave dirges low, like leaves above my bier;
Where kindly chestnut leaves
Would shade the woe of every plant that grieves,
And e'en the great Oak's head
Let fall the tears of dew when this poor page is dead.
I am forlorn:
Night brings no darkness and the day no light;
Noon brings but noise to vary my affright;
I'm dying 'neath the city's loathsome blight,
Far, O my mother Nature, from thy sight,
Far from thy earth, thy heaven, and the woodland bright
Where I was born.





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