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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