From what proud star I know not, but I found Myself newborn below the coppice rail, No bigger than the dewdrops and as round, In a soft sward, no cattle might assail. And here I gathered mightiness and grew With this one dream kindling in me: that I Should never cease from conquering light and dew Till my white splendour touched the trembling sky. A century of blue and stilly light Bowed down before me, the dew came agen, The moon my sibyl worshipped through the night, The sun returned and long revered: but then Hoarse drooping darkness hung me with a shroud And switched at me with shrivelled leaves in scorn: Red morning stole beneath a grinning cloud, And suddenly clambering over dike and thorn A half-moon host of churls with flags and sticks Hallooed and hurtled up the partridge brood, And Death clapped hands from all the echoing thicks, And trampling envy spied me where I stood: Who haled me tired and quaking, hid me by, And came agen after an age of cold, And hung me in the prison-house a-dry From the great crossbeam. Here defiled and old I perish through unnumbered hours, I swoon, Hacked with harsh knives to staunch a child's torn hand; And all my hopes must with my body soon Be but as crouching dust and wind-blown sand. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS [MAY 9, 1775] by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT THE POET'S BRIDAL DAY SONG by ALLAN CUNNINGHAM A DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86 by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL SING-SONG; A NURSERY RHYME BOOK: 105 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI A TEAMSTER'S FAREWELL by CARL SANDBURG BEETHOVEN'S SEVENTH SYMPHONY by LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN |