(SONG OF THE HOURS.)
Between the gates of night and morn,
With sleepless hands and sleepless eyes,
We watch the sun and moon outworn,
The silent stars that sink and rise.
In hidden chambers of the night,
The thread of Fate we sit and spin,
Through death and life, in dark and light,
From life’s slim staff to wind and win.
With joinèd hands and parting feet,
The work is wove, and still undone;
But still we tread Time’s measure fleet,
As through the glass the sand is spun.
With linkèd hands and feet that wind
Between the pillars of the day,
Around the house the garland bind,
For spring hath come, we cannot stay.
They passed. A change came o’er the sky.
I heard a shout—I heard a cry.
A horn’s far sound the woods awoke,
And sudden from the thicket broke,
In my soul’s sight, a thing of flame,
And after, swift, a horseman came—
A youth intent upon the chase;
But ever, as he urged his pace,
One laid her hands upon his rein,
And from that end would him restrain;
While did the stirring horn resound,
And in the leash each panting hound
Pressed hard to slip the tightened chain.
What would that eager hunter gain?
Some magic thing whose form and hue
Still changed as he did close pursue—
A flame, a bubble of the air?
A woman, marvellously fair?
Yea, every shape it hath in turn
That makes man’s troubled soul to burn,
And doth his baffled sight elude
To leave the world a solitude.
Again the sounding horn did bray,
The hounds were slipt and broke away,
And swift throughout the close they sped,
Still as the changeful quarry led;
Till far beyond the open green
They flashed the forest stems between,
And soon were lost in night of wood.
Again I heard Time’s interlude:—