Bare Boughs

O heart,--that beat the bird’s blithe blood,
The blithe bird’s strain, and understood
The song it sang to leaf and bud,--
What dost thou in the wood?

O soul,--that kept the brook’s glad flow,
The glad brook’s word to sun and moon,--
What dost thou here where song lies low,
Dead as the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain’s wild bugles ring.

The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o’er the melancholy, trails
The black crow’s eldritch call.

Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When Life struck hands with Love?

A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one bubbled in the leaves:
A song, one threw where orchards grew
Red-appled to the eaves.

The birds are flown; the flowers are dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray;
The wild winds hang i’ the boughs instead,
And wild leaves strew the way.