Publish thy revelation on the lawns—
Sing ever in the dark ethereal dawns;
Sometime, in some sweet year,
These stormy souls, these men of Earth may hear.
But hark again,
From the secret glen,
That voice of rapture and ethereal youth
Now laden with despair.
Forbear, O bird, forbear:
Is life not terrible enough, forsooth?
Cease, cease the mystic song—
No more, no more, the passion and the pain:
It wakes my life to fret against the chain;
It makes me think of all the agèd wrong—
Of joy and the end of joy and the end of all—
Of souls on Earth, and souls beyond recall.
Ah, ah, that voice again!
It makes me think of all these restless men,
Called into time—their progress and their goal;
And now, oh now, it sends into my soul
Dreams of a love that might have been for me—
That might have been—and now can never be.
Tell me no more of these—
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