O heart,—that beat the bird’s blithe blood,
The blithe bird’s strain, and understood
The song it sang to leaf and bud,—
What dost thou in the wood?
O soul,—that kept the brook’s glad flow,
The glad brook’s word to sun and moon,—
What dost thou here where song lies low,
Dead as the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain’s wild bugles ring.
The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o’er the melancholy, trails
The black crow’s eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When Life struck hands with Love?
A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one bubbled in the leaves:
A song, one threw where orchards grew
Red-appled to the eaves.
The birds are flown; the flowers are dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray;
The wild winds hang i’ the boughs instead,
And wild leaves strew the way.