Bitter-Sweet

The witless calf stands blatant at his chain While the brute mother, pent within her stall, With the wild stress of instinct goes distraught, And frets her horns, and bellows through the night. The stream runs black and the far waterfall That sang so sweetly through the summer eves, And swelled and swayed to Zephyrs softest breath, Leaps with a sullen roar the dark abyss, And howls its hoarse responses to the wind. The mill is still. The distant factory, That swarmed yestreen with many-fingered life And bridged the river with a hundred bars Of molten light, is dark, and lifts its bulk With dim, uncertain angles, to the sky. Yet lower bows the storm. The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs, and, with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom Bitter-Sweet. And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion and the oak, Mellowed in fibre by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, Forsakes its poise, and, with a booming crash, Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered rocks, And lies a shattered ruin. Other scene Across the swale, half up the pine-capped hill, Stands the old farm-house with its clump of barns The old red farm-house dim and dun to-night, Save where the ruddy firelights from the hearth Flap their bright wings against the window-panes, A billowy swarm that beat their slender bars, Or seek the night to leave their track of flame Upon the sleet, or sit, with shifting feet And restless plumes, among the poplar boughs The spectral poplars, standing at the gate. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.