The Lover - (Japan) Poem by Richard Henry Stoddard

IT is dark and lonesome here,
Beneath the windy eaves:—
The cold, cold ground my bed,
My coverlet dead leaves,
My only bedfellow
The rain that wets my sleeves!

If it be day, or night,
I know not, cannot say,
For I am like a child
Who has lost his troubled way,
Till I see the white of the hoar-frost—
Then I know it is day!

I touch the silent strings,
The broken lute complains;
The sweets of love are gone,
The bitterness remains,
Like the memory of summer
In the time of the long rains!

A few more days and nights,
My tears will cease to flow;
For I hear a voice within,
Which tells me I shall go,
Before the morning hoar-frost
Becomes the night of snow!