A Commonplace Day

The day is turning ghost,     And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,      To join the anonymous host     Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,      To one of like degree.      I part the fire-gnawed logs,     Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends      Upon the shining dogs;     Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,      And beamless black impends.      Nothing of tiniest worth     Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,      Since the pale corpse-like birth     Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -      Dullest of dull-hued Days!      Wanly upon the panes     The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet      Here, while Day's presence wanes,     And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,      He wakens my regret.      Regret - though nothing dear     That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,      Or bloomed elsewhere than here,     To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,      Or mark him out in Time . . .      - Yet, maybe, in some soul,     In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,      Or some intent upstole     Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows      The world's amendment flows;      But which, benumbed at birth     By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be      Embodied on the earth;     And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity      May wake regret in me.