English poem
Die down, O dismal day! and let me live
by David Gray (1836–1888)
Die down, O dismal day! and let me live. And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn With coloured clouds—large, light and fugitive— By upper winds through pompous motions blown. Now it is death in life—a vapour dense Creeps round my window till I cannot see The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens Shagging the mountain-tops. O God! make free This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold— Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, While she performs her custom’d charities. I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare— O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air!
More by David Gray
- A vale of tears, a wilderness of woe
- And thus proceeds the mode of human life
- And, well-belovèd, is this all, this all
- Father! when I have passed, with deathly swoon
- From my sick-bed gazing upon the west
- From this entangling labyrinthine maze
- Hew Atlas for my monument; upraise
- If it must be; if it must be, O God