The blue north summer over it
Is bland with long ethereal days;
The gleaming martins wheel and flit
Where breaks your sun down orient ways.
There, when the gradual twilight falls,
Through quietudes of dusk afar,
Hermit, antiphonal hermit calls
From hills below the first pale star.
Then, in your passionate love’s foredoom
Once more your spirit stirs the air,
And you are lifted through the gloom
To warm the coils of her dark hair.
Bliss Carman.
THE EAVESDROPPER.
IN a still room at hush of dawn,
My Love and I lay side by side
And heard the roaming forest wind
Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
Because the round day was so fair;
While memories of reluctant night
Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
Outside, a yellow maple-tree,
Shifting upon the silvery blue
With small innumerable sound,
Rustled to let the sunlight through.
The livelong day the elvish leaves
Danced with their shadows on the floor;
And the lost children of the wind
Went straying homeward by our door.
And all the swarthy afternoon
We watched the great deliberate sun
Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
Counting his hilltops one by one.
Then as the purple twilight came
And touched the vines along our eaves,
Another shadow stood without
And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.