The nights are full of love;
The stars and moon take up the golden tale
Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale,
Mixing their fires above,
Grow eloquent thereof.
Such days are like a sigh
That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss:
Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss
On lips that half deny—
The warm lips of July.
EVENING ON THE FARM
From out the hills where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture-lands,
With strained and strident cry,
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.
A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven’s azure, thin as crape,
And blue as rain.
By ways, that sunset’s sardonyx
O’erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.
From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that, wandering, win
From out the violet hills,
Those haunters of the dusk begin,
The whippoorwills.
Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;
And, loosened from his chain,
The shaggy watch-dog bounds and barks,
And barks again.
Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;
And now an owlet, far away,
Cries twice or thrice, “T-o-o-w-h-o-o”;
And cool dim moths of mottled gray
Flit through the dew.