When the dark comes,
" Is this the end ? " I pray ;
No answer from the night,
And then once more the day.
I take the world again
Upon my neck and go
Pace with the serious hours.
Since fate will have it so,
Begone, dead man, unclasp
Your hands from round my heart,
I and my burden pass.
You and your peace depart.
Night like purple flakes of snow
Falls with ease
Catching on the roofs of houses
In the tops of trees
Down upon the distant grass
And the distant flower
It will drift into this room
In an hour....
By the sea of sleep walks white-robed Night;
The breeze but the faint rustle of her drapery
That calls the mist-made bark of dream
From the cavern of the Unknown to sail to us,
Laden with endless star-like fancies.
And She! the magician, walks on and on
Over the sapphire embankment of the sky
Like a moving magnet drawing behind her a million dream-argosies.
The rosy mist stilly polishes the round mirror,
The moon;
Golden her face
Reflecting the cool sweet glory of a
Baby sun
When dangling
His short golden arms in the cradle of the sky
After night
Gave him birth,
And herself died as day dies to see the moon,
This golden
Rose-washed stone
That the unseen hand puts on the crown of night
Beside it puts
Bits of white--
The star-jewels like million fancies, worshipping
Like tears shed over a dream,
Like sighs that stream
In an unseen nameless way
Into the heart of our lay.
It seemed hour on hours,
Years like fading flowers
Scattered their petals and bloom
In a half-lit forest of gloom.
The softness of its sounds,
Like the coursing of a million hounds
Of dream over the glade of sleep
Where tortured silences creep.
Exquisite, pain-laden, peaceful,
This night most beautiful,
What love forsaken by loving
Sets his heart a'singing?
From her many-colored bow Nature
Has hurled her silver arrows of rain
And slain the hosts of Dark.
Jeweled with a single star, the Moon
Walks the garden of Night;
Higher and higher
Through the star-enflowered pathways of sapphire
She draws her train of silver.
Pale this twilight-face,
Shade-ridden the horizon-light;
The forest, a green-gold vision of grace
In its frame of lavender mist.
No rose-leaf washed in moonlight;
No vine on vermilion walls;
Pale sunlight fading into night,
Dark tunes, the music of the hour.
No death, nor life is ours, here;
But the vast vague sea of black
Sounded by star-mariners
Seeking the Infinite's track.
The night builds her temple of rain :
In the forest a sobbing music
Played by the hands of darkness
On the scale of dark leaves.
No bird-song stirs the soul;
Nor the golden dawn-harmonies;
A cry, a shedding of tears,
A music of sable tonalities.
Truly, a temple of silence and sound,
A vibrant, and dim solitude,
A gray telling of black beads;
A prayer, a moan, a dim worship.
Gone yesterday's rain;
Star-babies play in heaven;
The breeze that with clouds
Stole the moon, lies in chains
In the mountain's dark cavern.
The golden children of night
Raise their arms in joy,
As the moon-nurse opens
The nursery door of West,
And gives these the golden sun for toy.
The Milky Way,
That silver shadow,
Binds the heaven and earth
Like the chain of love.
The star-hosts, smiling guests of night,
Witness this meeting of love;
And my soul, in a silver stream
Like "the Way,"
Flows to meet them all
Across the ocean of night's silence,
Beyond the Universe's wall.
The soul of day migrates into the night;
The moon on the eastern hill;
The sound of work seeks repose
Through sunset's silence, into deeper silence still!
No dark this eve, but a silver flow
Washing from the sky the dusty sunset glow,
Then mount it with a soft star —
A reflection of God's eye in Heaven's mirror.
It is but coming and going;
Laughing or weeping;
In dark or day!
Life is but a lay:
Rings sad or gay.
Depending on our singing.