Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, STORM LINES, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

STORM LINES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When the rains of november are dark on the hills
Last Line: Years!
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Storms


WHEN the rains of November are dark on the hills, and the pine-trees incessantly
roar
To the sound of the wind-beaten crags, and the floods that in foam through their
black channels pour:

When the breaker-lined coast stretches dimly afar through the desolate waste of
the gale,
And the clang of the sea-gull at nightfall is heard from the deep, like a
mariner's wail:

When the gray sky drops low, and the forest is bare, and the laborer is housed
from the storm,
And the world is a blank, save the light of his home through the gust shining
redly and warm: --

Go thou forth, if the brim of thy heart with its tropical fulness of life
overflow, --
If the sun of thy bliss in the zenith is hung, nor a shadow reminds thee of woe!

Leave the home of thy love; leave thy labors of fame; in the rain and the
darkness go forth,
When the cold winds unpausingly wail as they drive from the cheerless expanse of
the North.

Thou shalt turn from the cup that was mantling before; thou shalt hear the
eternal despair
Of the hearts that endured and were broken at last, from the hills and the sea
and the air!

Thou shalt hear how the Earth, the maternal, laments for the children she
nurtured with tears, --
How the forest but deepens its wail and the breakers their roar, with the march
of the years!

Then the gleam of thy hearth-fire shall dwindle away, and the lips of thy loved
ones be still;
And thy soul shall lament in the moan of the storm, sounding wide on the
shelterless hill.

All the woes of existence shall stand at thy heart, and the sad eyes of myriads
implore,
In the darkness and storm of their being, the ray, streaming out through thy
radiant door.

Look again: how that star of thy Paradise dims, through the warm tears,
unwittingly shed; --
Thou art man, and a sorrow so bitterly wrung never fell on the dust of the Dead!

Let the rain of the midnight beat cold on thy cheek, and the proud pulses chill
in thy frame,
Till the love of thy bosom is grateful and sad, and thou turn'st from the
mockery of Fame!

Take with humble acceptance the gifts of thy life; let thy joy touch the
fountain of tears;
For the soul of the Earth, in endurance and pain, gathers promise of happier
years!





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