A Poet Strives

I know it's vain you mountains, woods, but still
I strive to write your wild and wondrous hue,
Your rocks and lakes and ever rolling hill,
Gold girded eve or morn immersed in dew.

For days and days and nights and nights I've toiled
In solitude and out in sunny field
To put in words your beauty that I'm foiled,
Can't seem to capture you but I'll not yield.

I've often tried to pen the pictured scene,
To write it down with fond and anxious care,
In rhyme to equal nature, forests green
And filled with birds whose songs refresh the air.

My thoughts so full of fevered fancies sweep
From mind to pen, both dry; oh I could weep!