  What world-agony distils its poignancy this day? What pain-laden heart pours out its exhaustless lay Of tormenting woe and tortured silences? From the far reaches of the marshland Along and beyond the crescent-bed of the sea-sand What tempest on the wave's-strings makes its cadences? The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams Raise their shadowy heads where pour in streams The tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies; While into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet Turbidly fall and dance sheet upon sheet To the measureless measure of the wind's empty sighs. No light but a dismal gray, that neither throbs nor quivers On the torn banks of the heavens' cloud-rivers, But stonily stands still, like death that dies never. Not-dead, but a weeping world bathing its corpses— Its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's hearses To be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer. It writhes in agony, rolls out in undulating rills, This rain-melody from the sea-waves to the farthest hills, Thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight. It is all dark and dank, a mourning of earth and heaven, Sorrow-laden, life-weary, long-lost, death-craven, A day lost to time, a light more baleful than night. No dead these, but a living death seeking peace From the furies—their own thoughts—sorrow—surcease, Kissing the lashing wind thinking it to be the breeze. Pour, pour, pour, O relentless, exhaustless pain! To the measure of thine own agony, thy woe's refrain, These desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas. |
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