| |
| THE SUN is sinking over hill and sea, | |
| Its red light fires a spectral line of shore; | |
| Night droops upon our half-world mistily | |
| With sombre glory and ghost-haunted lore; | |
| The stars show dim and pallid in the sky, | 5 |
| Vague, wraith-white glimmerings of volcanic spheres, | |
| And a slim crescent of the moon appears | |
| Like some young herald in the hours that die. | |
| |
| Soon we who watch the fading of a day, | |
| Who feel the cool winds of the ocean blow | 10 |
| Upon our dusk fields in sweet, vagrant way, | |
| Freshening earth’s arid spaces with their glow, | |
| Stand forth amid the infinite peace of night, | |
| An infinite peace for high and holy souls | |
| That strive to find their far, mysterious goals | 15 |
| Beyond the horizon of their eager sight. | |
| |
| At this sequestered hour when tender sleep | |
| Holds out to listless lives its precious boon, | |
| When men grow weary of the fruits they reap, | |
| Grow weary of recurrent dawn and noon, | 20 |
| Peace dwells upon them for a little while, | |
| Like dew and shade upon the growing grass, | |
| And, mindless of uncounted hours that pass, | |
| They woo a deep oblivion and they smile. | |
| |
| Yet I, whose nights are full of waking dreams, | 25 |
| Sleep not—but watch the furtive moments drift | |
| Like sluggish waves, and watch the fire-bright gleam | |
| Of vibrant planets rolling straight and swift | |
| Along their orbit pathways, even as life | |
| Moves in its earthward orbit to the grave, | 30 |
| Till I, an atom, doomed to weep and slave, | |
| Feel my fast kinship with celestial strife. | |
| |
| For now I see the universe outspread | |
| Within my vision, as with close-shut lids | |
| One may read clear the history of the dead | 35 |
| And stand with Pharaohs by the Pyramids, | |
| Or sit within some rare Athenian home; | |
| Yes, as the words and deeds of men are brought | |
| Into the widening circle of my thought, | |
| The stars grow real to me like deathless Rome. | 40 |
| |
