Thou shalt hear how the Earth, the maternal, laments for the children she nurtured with tears—
How the forest but deepens its wail and the breakers their roar, with the march of the years!
Then the gleam of thy hearth-fire shall dwindle away, sad the lips of thy loved ones be still:
And thy soul shall lament in the moan of the storm, sounding wide on the shelterless hill.
All the woes of existence shall stand at thy heart, and the sad eyes of myriads implore,
In the darkness and storm of their being, the ray, streaming out through thy radiant door.
Look again: how that star of thy Paradise dims, through the warm tears, unwittingly shed—
Thou art man, and a sorrow so bitterly wrung, never fell on the dust of the Dead!
Let the rain of the midnight beat cold on thy cheek, and the proud pulses chill in thy frame,
Till the love of thy bosom is grateful and sad, and thou turn'st from the mockery of Fame!