WHEN I look out I see the fair Counterpart of a happy dream: Green rollers hissing on broad sands, Willows o'erwaving a still stream. When I look in—how dense and foul The waters of my angry flood, With fevers clinging to furred boughs And ancient serpents in my blood! O bitter mock of this and that! How should I with a simple gaze Meet this enchantment of pure sense Unhaunted by sick yesterdays? How look with single joy upon The leaping hounds' eternal flight— The long downs leaping with the waves, The vexed waves barking through the night? How should not all be gloomed and wronged By images of fear and ill; Echo fall menacing on my ear, And muted shame unfix my will? Age, with unabating passions, Narrows upon me; yet I cry Unending for youth's fresh devices That lit my past and made this "I." Is it the petty scourge of thought, This malady of small regrets, Misfeatures all I dream upon And mars the joy that sight begets? How great the puny Ego swells In the distinction of remorse! Shadows grotesquely darken over, Clear eyes grow dim, pure voices coarse. O folly! self-forgetting is sole bliss, Self-idolism the steepest hell, Like the East Wind that seres the earth, Self dries up every human well. Look farther—Down the lane there swings A young bull, prince-like mid his thralls; Deep-breasted, mountain-thewed, serene As Hector pacing Troy's proud walls. The lowlier herd sways slowly after, Milk-laden; now the last step dies. The heat breathes heavy, lingering, while Shrill martins strip the orchard skies. And still beyond, remotely clear, The green hounds in long, lovely motion Follow the cloudy deer, and stretch Their supple thighs towards the sleek ocean. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...STRANGE MEETINGS: 1 by HAROLD MONRO THE ALLEY. AN IMITATION OF SPENSER by ALEXANDER POPE PROLOGUE TO DRAMA ..... ANNIVERSARY OF CARRS' MARRIAGE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD SEEKING WATERS by DORIS R. BECK INVULNERABLE by WILLIAM ROSE BENET |