Folk Song

When merry milkmaids to their cattle call                 At evenfall                 And voices range              Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,              Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,                 Like migrant doves,                 Wake and give wing              To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.              The new still holds the old moon in her arms;                 The ancient charms                 Of dew and dusk              Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,              And, at each day's millennial eclipse,                 On new men's lips,                 Some old song starts,              Made of the music of millennial hearts,              Whereto one listens as from long ago                 And learns to know                 That one day's tears              And love and life are as a thousand years',              And that some simple shepherd, singing of                 His pain and love,                 May haply find              His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.