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| COME earth’s little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill; | |
| Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil. | |
| In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along | |
| Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song. | |
| All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away | 5 |
| Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day. | |
| Night comes; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly in her flight | |
| Where the fiery dust of evening, shaken from the feet of light, | |
| Thrusts its monstrous barriers between the pure, the good, the true, | |
| That our weeping eyes may strain for, but shall never after view. | 10 |
| Only yester eve I watched with heart at rest the nebulæ | |
| Looming far within the shadowy shining of the Milky Way; | |
| Finding in the stillness joy and hope for all the sons of men; | |
| Now what silent anguish fills a night more beautiful than then: | |
| For earth’s age of pain has come, and all her sister planets weep, | 15 |
| Thinking of her fires of morning passing into dreamless sleep. | |
| In this cycle of great sorrow for the moments that we last | |
| We too shall be linked by weeping to the greatness of her past: | |
| But the coming race shall know not, and the fount of tears shall dry, | |
| And the arid heart of man be arid as the desert sky. | 20 |
| So within my mind the darkness dawned, and round me everywhere | |
| Hope departed with the twilight, leaving only dumb despair. | |
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