Classic Poem

( THE DROUTH — THE RAIN .)

THE DROUTH .

The weary night at last is worn away,
The dawn begins to throb among the stars
And in the east the slowly reddening bars
Foretell the coming of ungracious day.
The hours have brought no dewy balm to stay
The burning fever in the earth's deep breast;
Her greaTheart languishing with woes unguessed
Turns sorrowing to the sun's ungladdening ray.

As doth the longing heart which long hath made
Some cherished image sacred in its thought
Turn to the semblance still — which like a shade
Stalks from the tomb that time and change have wrought,
Turns as the soul doth turn — to seek distress
Drawn by a love which brings but bitterness.

What is at fault? The sun's undying flame
Hath lost no whit of his life-kindling force;
Fresh from morn's purple gates he lifts his course
As when the mist-veiled earth in maiden shame
Watched his first coming evermore the same
Great and eternal wonder paints the east
With Tyrian dyes; nor hath his glory ceased
To fire the west, departing as he came.

But now his ardent wooing brings but pain;
Love hath a time for clouds and fruitful tears,
Where these come not the heart shall seek in vain
The nameless charm which hinders but endears:
The fiery sun unhindered in his quest
Hath filled with woe the earth's fond yielding breast.

And we, the conscious children of her care
Are made partakers of her silent woe;
We are but part of all we see and know;
Born of the earth, needs must our spirits share
The field's dumb grief, the woodland's mute despair,
The thirst of vales which feel no more the flow
Of cooling streams, the fall of leaves that glow
Untimely on our pathway here and there.

The dying rose, the lily's shriveled stem,
The droop of withering vines which overhang
The changed abodes of many a faded gem,
All wake within the soul a kindred pang.
And morning's joy doth seem wellnigh withdrawn
Because no bird gives welcome to the dawn.

Filled with sad thoughts we watch the wounding sky
Through which the noontide blazing of the sun
Burns on the quivering air. And one by one
The white and blinding clouds that float on high,
Soon shredded in the glare, — dissolve and die;
The grass fore-paints the autumn unbegun:
The loud and shrill cicada seems to stun
The dusty groves with his unceasing cry.

And when the flaring torch of evening burns
Along the edges of the sullen cloud,
And all the dreary stretching landscape turns
To gloom beneath the night's descending shroud
Decked with the mocking stars, the spirit yearns
For morn once more, and nature groans aloud.

THE RAIN .

Wrapped in her cloudy veil the earth at last
Floods all her bosom with refreshing tears;
Rejoicing echoes fill each vale thaThears
The thunder's jarring voice; despair is past;
The trailing torrents bend before the blast;
The air grows thick with swift descending spears;
The hill is lost; the landscape disappears;
The parched fields drink; the streams are filling fast;

Wild sprays are winnowed from the emerald waves
That rise upon the blurred, fantastic sea
Of rocking treetops where the tempest raves
Along the darkened upland; scared birds flee
Half seen amidst the generous flow which laves
The grateful slopes and drowns the swimming lea.