One Summer Night.
The Fens, June, 1897.
FAR in the west the crescent moon hung low,
A filmy haze about it faintly spread,
And one bright star, a point of silver light
Seem’d comrade to it. Whispering Zephyrus
Tender as love, stole through the list’ning leaves,
Making a pleasant murmur in the night,
And touched the glimmering waters with his breath.
The ripples came unnumbered to the shore,
Soft-murmuring through the sedge and fenny reeds
With that same whisp’ring voice that Pan once heard
What time he first made pipes to sound the praise
Of her whom he had lost. The water’s breast
Was banded with a path of shimmering light
Broken by the ever-restless waves, which made
A thousand points of liquid brilliancy.
And in the beauty of still, hallowed night
Beside the plashing sandy shore, we met
In happiness. Each whispering of the wind,
Each tremulous leaf, and even the sleeping flowers
Seem’d breathing “Love” in tender unison,
And the sphered star in Heaven sang that word.
Dost thou remember how from out the grass,
I plucked a gentle flow’ret by that shore,
—Anemone some call it, wind-flower some,
Sprung from the crimson of Adonis’ blood
Where he was slain,—and how I softly said,
“O thou belovèd, beauty is a rose
Growing in Life’s fair garden, by the spring
Of deathless Purity, and that clear dew
Which lies within its sweetness hid, is Love.”
Dost thou recall? And so it chance, I pray
Though we be parted, now and evermore,
Think sometimes of that night, and fancy still
We see the summer landscape, glimmering,
Lit by the steady-burning lights of heaven,
We scent the sweetness of the warm young night,
We hold the tender wind-flower, and still hear
The murmuring ripples on the sounding shore.