New York Nocturnes
And Other Poems
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
VERSE:
Orion and Other Poems. (Out of Print.) Lippincott.
In Divers Tones. D. Lothrop Co.
Songs of the Common Day. Longmans, Green & Co.
The Book of the Native. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
PROSE:
The Canadians of Old. From the French of de Gaspé. D. Appleton & Co.
Around the Camp Fire. T. Y. Crowell & Co.
Earth’s Enigmas. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
A History of Canada. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
The Forge in the Forest. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
A Sister to Evangeline. A Romance of Old Acadia. (In Press.) Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
New York Nocturnes
And Other Poems
By
Charles G. D. Roberts
Lamson, Wolffe and Company
Boston, New York and London
MDCCCXCVIII
Copyright, 1898,
By Lamson, Wolffe and Company.
All rights reserved.
THE IDEAL
To Her, when life was little worth,
When hope, a tide run low,
Between dim shores of emptiness
Almost forgot to flow,—
Faint with the city’s fume and stress
I came at night to Her.
Her cool white fingers on my face—
How wonderful they were!
More dear they were to fevered lids
Than lilies cooled in dew.
They touched my lips with tenderness,
Till life was born anew.
The city’s clamour died in calm;
And once again I heard
The moon-white woodland stillnesses
Enchanted by a bird;
The wash of far, remembered waves;
The sigh of lapsing streams;
And one old garden’s lilac leaves
Conferring in their dreams.
A breath from childhood daisy fields
Came back to me again,
Here in the city’s weary miles
Of city-wearied men.