Day,
when my crown’d estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken’d every living bloom,
And
blurr’d the splendour of the sun;
Who
usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her
crimson fringes to the shower;
Who
might’st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along
the hills, yet look’d the same.
As
wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro’ time,
And
cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,
Lift
as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows
Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar,
And
sow the sky with flying boughs,
And
up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And
hide thy shame beneath the ground.