Street Lamps

Gold, with an innermost speck     Of silver, singing afloat         Beneath the night,     Like balls of thistle-down     Wandering up and down     Over the whispering town         Seeking where to alight!     Slowly, above the street     Above the ebb of feet         Drifting in flight;     Still, in the purple distance     The gold of their strange persistence     As they cross and part and meet         And pass out of sight!     The seed-ball of the sun     Is broken at last, and done         Is the orb of day.     Now to the separate ends     Seed after day-seed wends         A separate way.     No sun will ever rise     Again on the wonted skies         In the midst of the spheres.     The globe of the day, over-ripe,     Is shattered at last beneath the stripe     Of the wind, and its oneness veers         Out myriad-wise.     Seed after seed after seed     Drifts over the town, in its need         To sink and have done;     To settle at last in the dark,     To bury its weary spark         Where the end is begun.     Darkness, and depth of sleep,     Nothing to know or to weep         Where the seed sinks in     To the earth of the under-night     Where all is silent, quite     Still, and the darknesses steep         Out all the sin.