 | Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman |  |
174
[IV. Nor looks that backward life so bare to me]
Nor looks that backward life so bare to me,My later youth, and ways I've wandered through
But touched with innocent grace, the early bee
On the maple log, the white-heaped cherry-tree
That hummed all day in the sun, the April blue!
Yet hardly now one ray the Forward hath
To show where sorrow rests, and rest begins;
Although I check my feet, nor walk to wrath
Through days of crime, and grosser shadowings
Of evil done in the dark, but fearfully,
Mid unfulfilled yet unrelinquished sins
That hedge me in, and press about my path,
Like purple-poison flowers of stramony,
With their dull opiate-breath, and dragon-wings.
| Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman | |