Is this the portent of the day nigh past, And of a restless grave O'er which the eternal sadness gathers fast; Or but the heaped wave Of some chance, wandering tide, Such as that world of awe Whose circuit, listening to a foreign law, Conjunctures ours at unguess'd dates and wide, Does in the Spirit's tremulous ocean draw, To pass unfateful on, and so subside? Thee, whom ev'n more than Heaven loved I have, And yet have not been true Even to thee, I, dreaming, night by night, seek now to see, And, in a mortal sorrow, still pursue Thro' sordid streets and lanes And houses brown and bare And many a haggard stair Ochrous with ancient stains, And infamous doors, opening on hapless rooms, In whose unhaunted glooms Dead pauper generations, witless of the sun, Their course have run; And ofttimes my pursuit Is check'd of its dear fruit By things brimful of hate, my kith and kin, Furious that I should keep Their forfeit power to weep, And mock, with living fear, their mournful malice thin. But ever, at the last, my way I win To where, with perfectly sad patience, nurst By sorry comfort of assured worst, Ingrain'd in fretted cheek and lips that pine, On pallet poor Thou lyest, stricken sick, Beyond love's cure, By all the world's neglect, but chiefly mine. Then sweetness, sweeter than my tongue can tell, Does in my bosom well, And tears come free and quick And more and more abound For piteous passion keen at having found, After exceeding ill, a little good; A little good Which, for the while, Fleets with the current sorrow of the blood, Though no good here has heart enough to smile. |