When the moon rose, like a cup
Lay the valley, brimming shine
Of mesmeric mist, like wine,
To the sky’s dim face held up.
As she rose from out the mines
Of the nacreous darkness, Night
Met her, clad in dewy light
’Mid Pine Mountain’s sachem pines.
As through fragmentary fleece
Of the clouds her circle broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.
As, an orb of sparry quartz,
Her serene circumference grew,
Home we turned. And all night through
Slept the sleep of happy hearts.
THE WHIPPOORWILL
I
Above lone woodland ways that led
To dells the stealthy twilights tread
The west was hot geranium red;
And still, and still,
Along old lanes the locusts sow
With clustered pearls the Maytimes blow,
Deep in the crimson afterglow,
We heard the homeward cattle low,
And then, far off, like some far woe,
The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.
II
Beneath the idle beechen boughs
We heard the slow bells of the cows
Come softly, jangling towards the house;
And still, and still,
Beyond the light that would not die
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky,
Beyond the evening-star’s white eye
Of glittering chalcedony,
Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry
Of “whippoorwill,” of “whippoorwill.”