I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft,

As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book,

And in the heaven stars steal out one by one

As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.

I must not think, lest this new impulse die

In which I trust; I have no confidence:

So, I will sing on fast as fancies come;

Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints.

I strip my mind bare, whose first elements

I shall unveil—not as they struggle forth