Rain

What world-agony distils its poignancy this day? What pain-laden heart pours out its exhaustless lay Of tormenting woe and tortured silences?

From the far reaches of the marshland Along and beyond the crescent-bed of the sea-sand What tempest on the wave's-strings makes its cadences?

The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams Raise their shadowy heads where pour in streams The tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies;

While into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet Turbidly fall and dance sheet upon sheet To the measureless measure of the wind's empty sighs.

No light but a dismal gray, that neither throbs nor quivers On the torn banks of the heavens' cloud-rivers, But stonily stands still, like death that dies never.

Not-dead, but a weeping world bathing its corpses-- Its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's hearses To be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer.

It writhes in agony, rolls out in undulating rills, This rain-melody from the sea-waves to the farthest hills, Thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight.

It is all dark and dank, a mourning of earth and heaven, Sorrow-laden, life-weary, long-lost, death-craven, A day lost to time, a light more baleful than night.

No dead these, but a living death seeking peace From the furies--their own thoughts--sorrow--surcease, Kissing the lashing wind thinking it to be the breeze.

Pour, pour, pour, O relentless, exhaustless pain! To the measure of thine own agony, thy woe's refrain, These desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas.

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