Ghostly and windy white [Page 168]
Clouds of the Autumn Night
THEN AND NOW
When my old heart was young, my dear,
The earth and heaven were so near
That in my dreams I oft could hear
The steps of airy races;
In woodlands, where bright waters ran,
On hills, God’s rainbows used to span,
I followed voices not of man,
And smiled in spirit faces.
Now my old heart is old, my sweet,
No longer earth and heaven meet;
All life is grown to one dull street
Where fact with fancy clashes;
The voices now that speak to me
Are prose instead of poetry;
And in the faces now I see
Is less of flame than ashes.
BY THE TRYSTING-BEECH
Deep in the west a berry-colored bar
Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir
Stands outlined dark; above which—courier
Of dew and dreams—burns dusk’s appointed star.
And flash on flash, as when the elves wage war
In Goblinland, the fireflies bombard
The silence; and, like spirits, o’er the sward
The twilight winds bring fragrance from afar.
And now, withdrawn into the hill-wood belts,
A whippoorwill; while, with attendant states
Of pearl and silver, slow the great moon melts
Into the night—to show me where she waits,—
Like some slim moonbeam,—by the old beech-tree,
Who keeps her lips, fresh as a flower, for me.