“MAIL’S UP!” The vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
(His wife, his sister, or his lover.)
Mail’s up, the vast of night is over,
The grey-faced heaven joy does cover
With love, and God once more seems kind.
“Mail’s up!” the vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
What do I care for morning,
For a shivering aspen tree,
For sun flowers and sumac
Opening greedily?
What do I care for morning,
For the glare of the rising sun,
For a sparrow’s noisy prating,
For another day begun?
Give me the beauty of evening,
The cool consummation of night,
And the moon like a love-sick lady,
Listless and wan and white.
Give me a little valley
Huddled beside a hill,
Like a monk in a monastery,
Safe and contented and still,
When on the black abysses of the night
My little candle throws a trembling beam,
At first too faint and feeble it would seem
To give security to straining sight;
But presently we see its tiny light
Across the perilous pathway sends a gleam
That pierces through the darkness vast, supreme,
And step by step we find our way aright.
So in the vast and limitless unknown,
That wraps us with its fearful night around,
At first the beam by faith or knowledge thrown
Seems but to make the darkness more profound,
But presently one step ahead is shown —
Enough to prove that it is solid ground.
Afloat upon the tide one summer night,
Dreamily watching how the moonbeams bright
Made little broken rings of fairy light,
And vaguely lost in that half-conscious mood
That steals upon the sense in solitude,
I drifted near a shadowy island wood
Where all was silent, scarce a leaf was stirred-
So still the air — when suddenly I heard
The piercing, anguished cry as of a bird
In such distress it made the echoes ring
And set the startled silence quivering —
The wild appeal of some sweet feathered thing
In its extremity. And then a sound,
Half-muffled, faint, and all again was drowned
In silence inarticulate, profound.
I went my way; but that despairing cry,
I have unleashed my hands, like hounds,
And I must not call them back;
They are off with virile bounds
On the hidden quarry's track.
Though there come rain or sun —
Fleet and lean and white.
They will follow the scent until they run
The quarry to earth, and the quarry is night.
Dreams — and an old, old waking,
An unspent vision gone;
Night, clean with silence, breaking
Into loud dawn.
A wonder that is blurring
The new day's strange demands,
The indomitable stirring
Of folded hands.
Then only the hours' pageant
And the drowsing sound of their creep,
Bringing at last the vagrant
Dreams of new sleep.
My spirit is a captive bird
That beats against its cage all day,
Until its winging strength is whirred
Vainly away.
My spirit learns its impotence
Only when night has blurred its bars.
Wings seem a strange impertinence
Before the stars.
When you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.
The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood ;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say :
"Someone must be away."
The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.
A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door.
Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The earth takes up our bodies, every one,
And brings them slowly backward to the dark ;
Then on her shadowed side we droop and slumber,
Turned from the sun.
(Meanwhile He covers continents in light
One after other, so they stretch and wake,
Live their day through and droop again to slumber :
Day, night : day, night.)
The stars shine forth and disappear again,
Roaring about in space above our heads,
While we are folded to the earth in slumber
With dreaming brain.
We travel through the darkness : we are spun
Upward through rays of light into the morning ;
We waken with the earth : we glide from slumber
Toward the sun.
The night has cut
each from each
and curled the petals
back from the stalk
and under it in crisp rows;
under at an unfaltering pace,
under till the rinds break,
back till each bent leaf
is parted from its stalk;
under at a grave pace,
under till the leaves
are bent back
till they drop upon earth,
back till they are all broken.
O night,
you take the petals
Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
Nor the fir-tree
Nor the pine.
Nor sight of whin nor gorse
Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you,
Nor of linnet,
Nor of thrush.
Nor word nor touch nor sight
Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night
Where you were the dusk-eyed queen,
And there in the pallor of moon-veiled light
The loveliest things were seen ...
A slim-necked peacock sauntered there
In a garden of lavender hues,
And you were strange with your purple hair
As you sat in your amethyst chair
With your feet in your hyacinth shoes.
Oh, the moon gave a bluish light
Through the trees in the land of dreams and night.
I stood behind a bush of yellow-green
And whistled a song to the dark-haired queen ...