Silent yet eloquent: For not a sound

That might alarm the night’s lone centinel,

The dull-eyed Owl, escapes his trembling lip,

Unapt in supplication. He is young,

And yet the stamp of thought so tempers youth,

That all its fires are faded. What is He?

And why, when morning sails upon the breeze,

Fanning the blue hill’s summit, does he stay

Loit’ring and sullen, like a Truant boy,

Beside the woodland glen; or stretch’d along