Nightfall

I     Eve goes slowly     Dancing lightly     Clad with shadow up the hills;     Birds their singing     Cease at last, and silence     Falling like fine rain the valley fills.     Not a bat's cry     Stirs the stillness     Perfect as broad water sleeping,     Not a moth's wings     Flit in the gathering darkness,     Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.     Then a light shines     From the casement,     Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,     Palely golden     As the late eve's primrose,     Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.     II     Only joy now     Come in silence,     Come before your look's forgot;     Come and hearken     While the lonely shadow     Broadens on the hill and then is not.     Now the hour is,     Here the place is,     Here am I who saw thee here.     Evening darkens     All is still and marvellous,     Now the sharp stars in the deep sky peer.     Come and fill me     As the wind fills     Leafy wide boughs of a tree;     Come and windlike     Cleanse my slumbrous branches,     Come and moonlike bathe the leaves of me.     III     Eve has gone and     Night follows,     Every bush is now a ghost;     Every tree looms     Lofty large and sombre;     All day's simple friendliness is lost.     See the poplars     Black in blackness,     In all their leaves there is no sigh.     'Neath that darkling     Cedar who dare wander     Now, or under the vast oak would lie!...     Till that tingling     Silence broken     Every clod renews its breath;     Birds, leaves, grasses     Heave as one, then sleep on     Full of sweeter sleep and unlike death.     IV     Only joy now     Come like music     Falling clear from strings of light;     Come like shadow     Drinking up late sunrays,     Come like moonrays sweeping the round night.     See how night is     Opening flowerlike:     Open so thy bosom to me.     See how earth falls     Easeful into silence:     Let my moth-wing'd thought so fall on thee.     While the lamp's beam     Primrose golden     Now is like a shifting spear     Borne in battle,     Seen awhile then hidden,     Bold then beaten--now long lost, and here!