If I could sing the song of the dawn,
The carroling word of leaf and bird
And the sun-waked fern uncurling there,
I would go lonely and would not care.
If I could sing the song of the dusk,
The stars and moon of glistening June
Lit at the foot and head of me,
The Spinner might break the thread of me.
If I could sing but the song of love.
Fill my throat with each sounding note.
Others might kiss and clasp and cling,
Mine be the lips that would sing, would sing!
On the top-stone.
A nipping wind blowing.
Winter dusk closing in from the south Ards.
The moon rising, white and fantastic, over the loch and the town below.
I take off my hat, salute her, and descend into the darkness.
Silently fell
The snow on the waters
In the grey dusk
Of the winter evening:
Swirling and falling,
Sucked into the oily
Blue-black surface
Of the sea.
We pounded on slowly;
From our bows sheeted
A shuddering mass of heavy foam:
Night closed about us,
But ere we were darkened,
We saw close in
A great gaunt schooner
Beating to southward.
The day has brought me sun-loaned cheer,
And to unchangeable ways, change . . .
But dusk is here to make them strange,
Making them clear.
One shadow on my wall, an intimate
Of dusk, comes only when it comes alone.
It lifts out of new dark and spreads a great
Wing of quiet where once the sun has shone,
Cooling the air like rain on stone.
Such shadow might find entrance to a tomb.
And be at home in places where the dead
Are fitful sleepers; moving through the gloom
It might lay benediction on a head
That death has left uncomforted.
Do you hear the witches wailing?
Witches wailing, wailing, wailing,
Do you see the ghost robes trailing?
Ghost robes trailing, trailing, trailing
It is but a nighttime whisper,
But a whisper of the zephyr?
Or my soul in secret meeting
That dim soul whose fate is loving?
Tell me, tell me, tell me,
Voices of the Dusk.
Do you see those spirits lonely?
Spirits lonely, lonely, lonely.
Can they be for lost souls only?
Lost souls only, only, only.
Are they but the fearful phantoms,
Fearful phantoms from my fancy?
Come out and walk. The last few drops of light
Drain silently out of the cloudy blue ;
The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,
The fields are wet with dew.
All's quiet in the wood but, far away,
Down the hillside and out across the plain,
Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,
The softly panting train.
Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see
The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,
Or glimmering silver on a scented tree
That trembles as we pass.
Hark now ! So far, so far ... that distant song . . .
Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.
The dusk is full of sounds, that all along
The muttering boughs repeat.
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
The amber dusk veils the orange-tinted sea;
The coral-moon spreads silver wings
Like a gull, from a mysterious sea.
Follows in the wake of Night's star-laden argosy.
If you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple
Shining in the six o'clock September dusk:
If the red sumach on the autumn roads
Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes :
If the red-haws never burst in a million
Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying:
If all this beauty of yours never crushed me
Then there are many flying acres of birds for me,
Many drumming gray wings going home I shall see,
Many crying voices riding the north wind.
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how
they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their
hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a
great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.
Cover me over
In dusk and dust and dreams.
Cover me over
And leave me alone.
Cover me over.
You tireless, great.
Hear me and cover me,
Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams.