What world-agony distils its poignancy this day...

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.