Poems (Cary)/In Illness

For works with similar titles, see In Illness.
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IN ILLNESS.
No harsh complaint nor rude unmannered wo,Shall jar discordant in the dulcet flowOf music, raining through the chestnut wings Of the wild plaining dove,The while I touch my lyre's late shattered strings, Mourning about my love.
Now in the field of sunset, Twilight gray,Sad for the dying day,With wisps of shadows binds the sheaves of gold,And Night comes shepherding his starry foldAlong the shady bottom of the sky.Alas, that ISunken among life's faded ruins lie—My senses from their natural uses bound! What thing is likest to my wretched plight?—A barley grain cast into stony ground, That may not quicken up into the light,
Erewhile I dreamed about the hills of homeWhereon I used to roam; Of silver-leavéd larch,And willows, hung with tassels, when like bellsTinkle the thawing runnel's brimming swells; ​ And softly filling in the front of MarchThe new moon lies,Watching for harebells, and the buds that easeHeart's lovelorn, and the spotted adder's tongue,Dead heapéd leaves among—The verdurous season's cloud of witnesses; Of how the daisy shines  White, i' the knotty and close-nibbled grass;Of thickets full of prickly eglantines, And the slim spice-wood and red sassafras,Stealing between whose boughs the twinkling heatsSuck up the exhaléd sweetsFrom dew-embalméd beds of primroses,That all unpresséd lie,Save of enamored airs, right daintily, And golden-ringéd beesOf atmospheres of hymns, When wings go beating up the blue sublimeFrom hedgerows sweet with vermeil-sprouting limbs, In April's showery time,When lilacs come, and straggling flag-flowers, bright,As any summer light Ere yet the plowman's steersBrowse through the meadows from the traces free,Or steel-blue swallows twitter merrily,With slant wings shaving close the level ground,Where with his new-washed ewes thick huddled round, The careful herdsman plies the busy shears.But this was in life's May,Ere Lyra was away; ​And this fond seeming now no longer seems—Aching and drowsy pains keep down my dreams;— Even as a dreary wind  Within some hollow, black with poison flowers, Swoons into silence, dies the hope that linedMy lowly chamber with illumined wings, In life's enchanted hours,When, tender oxlips mixed through yellow stringsOf mulleinstars, with myrtles interfused,Pulled out of pastures green, I gaily usedTo braid up with my hair. Ah, well-a-day!Haply the blue eyes of another May,Open from rosy lids, I shall not see,For the white shroud-folds. If it thus must be,Oh, friends who near me keepTo watch or weep,When you shall see the coming of the nightComfort me with the lightOf Lyra's love,And pray the saints aboveTo pity me, if it be sin to knowHeaven here below.
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