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| SHE comes as comes the summer night, | |
| Violet, perfumed, clad with stars, | |
| To heal the eyes hurt by the light | |
| Flung by Day’s brandish’d scimitars. | |
| The parted crimson of her lips | 5 |
| Like sunset clouds that slowly die | |
| When twilight with cool finger-tips | |
| Unbraids her tresses in the sky. | |
| |
| The melody of waterfalls | |
| Is in the music of her tongue, | 10 |
| Low chanted in dim forest halls | |
| Ere Dawn’s loud bugle call has rung. | |
| And as a bird with hovering wings | |
| Halts o’er her young one in the nest, | |
| Then droops to still his flutterings, | 15 |
| She takes me to her fragrant breast. | |
| |
| O star and bird at once thou art, | |
| And Night, with purple-petall’d charm, | |
| Shining and singing to my heart, | |
| And soothing with a dewy calm. | 20 |
| Let Death assume this lovely guise, | |
| So darkly beautiful and sweet, | |
| And, gazing with those starry eyes, | |
| Lead far away my weary feet. | |
| |
| And that strange sense of valleys fair | 25 |
| With birds and rivers making song | |
| To lull the blossoms gleaming there, | |
| Be with me as I pass along. | |
| Ah! lovely sisters, Night and Death, | |
| And lovelier Woman—wondrous three, | 30 |
| ‘Givers of Life’, my spirit saith, | |
| Unfolders of the mystery. | |
| |
| Ah! only Love could teach me this, | |
| In memoried springtime long since flown; | |
| Red lips that trembled to my kiss, | 35 |
| That sighed farewell, and left me lone. | |
| O Joy and Sorrow intertwined,— | |
| A kiss, a sigh, and blinding tears,— | |
| Yet ever after in the wind, | |
| The bird-like music of the spheres! | 40 |
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