Читать книгу The Old Soldier's Story: Poems and Prose Sketches - Riley James Whitcomb - Страница 19

I am dazed and bewildered with living

A life but an intricate skein

Of hopes and despairs and thanksgiving

Wound up and unravelled again —

Till it seems, whether waking or sleeping,

I am wondering ever the while

At a something that smiles when I'm weeping,

And a something that weeps when I smile.

And I walk through the world as one dreaming

Who knows not the night from the day,

For I look on the stars that are gleaming,

And lo, they have vanished away:

And I look on the sweet-summer daylight,

And e'en as I gaze it is fled,

And, veiled in a cold, misty, gray light,

The winter is there in its stead.

I feel in my palms the warm fingers

Of numberless friends – and I look,

And lo, not a one of them lingers

To give back the pleasure he took;

And I lift my sad eyes to the faces

All tenderly fixed on my own,

But they wither away in grimaces

That scorn me, and leave me alone.

And I turn to the woman that told me

Her love would live on until death —

But her arms they no longer enfold me,

Though barely the dew of her breath

Is dry on the forehead so pallid

That droops like the weariest thing

O'er this most inharmonious ballad

That ever a sorrow may sing.

So I'm dazed and bewildered with living

A life but an intricate skein

Of hopes and despairs and thanksgiving

Wound up and unravelled again —

Till it seems, whether waking or sleeping,

I am wondering ever the while

At a something that smiles when I'm weeping,

And a something that weeps when I smile.