Classic Poem

Through the wide white streets of the little town
The bitter tide comes stealing down;
The night is astir with the wings of woe,
The shadows creep and cower low
At the creak of the frosts in the frozen snow—
And the aching tide drifts down.

The women and children will wake and sleep,
And the days will creep, and the days will creep,
And the silent tide flood full and deep,
And a shiver creep over hearth and kin,
And the gibbering shadows dance and grin
Till they fold us in, till they fold us in,
And we feel the chill of that shadowy tide
Which is cooling the world, and far and wide
Is surging up to the stars outside.

And in that day when the tide shall break
And the fulness of pain shall all pain slake
And the little city its rest shall take
From the long toil of life,
The strong man out of his sleep will wake,
From dreams of child and wife,
To find his hair and his beard washed grey
With the bitter spume of the frozen spray,
And the dust at his lips that he may not pray.

I feel it cold at my heart to-night;
It creaks the stair and dims the light,—
A frozen breath before my sight.