Dead, All Dead!

Dead, all dead! The earth, the fields, lie stretched
In sleep like weary toilers overdone.
The valleys gape like toothless age,
Besnaggled by dead trees. The hills,
Like bony jaws, whose flesh hath dropped,
Stand grinning at the deathy day.
The lily, too, hath cast her shroud,
And clothed her as a brown-robed nun.
The moon doth, at the even's creep,
Reach forth her whitened hands and sooth
The wrinkled brow of earth to sleep.
Ah, whither flown the fleecy summer clouds?
To bank, and fall to earth in billowed light,
And paint the winter's brown to spangled white.
Where too have flown the happy songs,
Long died away with sighing
On the shore-wave's crest?
Will they take Echo as their Guide,
And bound from hill to hill at this,
The sleepy time of earth,
And waken forest song 'mid naked waste?-
Ah, slumber, slumber on! 'Tis with
A loving hand He scattereth the snow,
To nestle young spring's offering,
That dying Earth shall live anew.