Henry Timrod (Генри Тимрод)

Sonnets. 9. I Know Not Why, But All This Weary Day

I know not why, but all this weary day,
Suggested by no definite grief or pain,
Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain;
Now it has been a vessel losing way,
Rounding a stormy headland; now a gray
Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main;
And then, a banner, drooping in the rain,
And meadows beaten into bloody clay.
Strolling at random with this shadowy woe
At heart, I chanced to wander hither! Lo!
A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush,
Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed,
And faint, warm airs, that nestle in the hush,
Like whispers round the body of the dead!

Henry Timrod’s other poems:

  1. The Stream is Flowing from the West
  2. To Whom?
  3. Sonnets. 14. Are These Wild Thoughts, Thus Fettered in My Rhymes
  4. An Exotic
  5. 1866 – Addressed to the Old Year

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