Chapter XXXIII

All night the rain-gusts shook the leaves
Around my window; and the blast
Rumbled the flickering flue, and fast
The storm streamed from the dripping eaves.
As if--’neath skies gone mad with fear--
The witches’ Sabboth galloped past,
The forests leapt like startled deer.

All night I heard the sweeping sleet;
And when the morning came, as slow
As pale affliction, with the woe
Of all the world dragged at her feet,
No spear of purple shattered through
The dark-gray of the east; no bow
Of gold, whose arrows cleft the blue.

But rain, that whipped the windows; filled
The spouts with rushing; and around
The garden stamped, and sowed the ground
With limbs and leaves; the wood-pool filled
With overgurgling.--Bleak and cold
The fields looked, where the foot-path wound
Through teasel and bur-marigold....

Yet there is kindness in such days
Of gloom, that doth console regret
With sympathy of tears, which wet
Old eyes that watch the back-log blaze--
A kindness, alien to the deep
Glad blue of sunny days that let
No thought in of the lives that weep.