As when the shadow of the gray eclipse
Haggards the countryside,
When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say,
And soft untimely bats begin to slide;
As darkness sweeps the morning light away,
So silence brushes music now from lips.
Oh! Can it be the songless spirit of this age
Has slain the ancient music, or that ears
Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know:
The streets grow more discordant with the years;
And that which bids the huckster sing no more,
Will drive the flower-woman from the door.
H.A.
EDGAR ALLAN POE[8]
Once in the starlight
When the tides were low,
And the surf fell sobbing
To the undertow,
I trod the windless dunes
Alone with Edgar Poe.
Dim and far behind us,
Like a fabled bloom
On the myrtle thickets,
In the swaying gloom
Hung the clustered windows
Of the barrack-room.
Faint on the evening
Tenuous and far
As the beauty shaken
From a vagrant star,
Throbbed the ache and passion
Of an old guitar.