Twilight Calm
Oh, pleasant eventide!Clouds on the western sideGrow grey and greyer hiding the warm sun:The bees and birds, their happy labours done,Seek their close nests and bide.
Screened in the leafy woodThe stock-doves sit and brood:The very squirrel leaps from bough to boughBut lazily; pauses; and settles nowWhere once he stored his food. 10
One by one the flowers close,Lily and dewy roseShutting their tender petals from the moon:The grasshoppers are still; but not so soonAre still the noisy crows.
The dormouse squats and eatsChoice little dainty bitsBeneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;Nibbling his fill he stops from time to timeAnd listens where he sits. 20
From far the lowings comeOf cattle driven home:From farther still the wind brings fitfullyThe vast continual murmur of the sea,Now loud, now almost dumb.
The gnats whirl in the air,The evening gnats; and thereThe owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sailFor prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snailComes forth, clammy and bare. 30
Hark! that’s the nightingale,Telling the selfsame taleHer song told when this ancient earth was young:So echoes answered when her song was sungIn the first wooded vale.
We call it love and painThe passion of her strain;And yet we little understand or know:Why should it not be rather joy that soThrobs in each throbbing vein? 40
In separate herds the deerLie; here the bucks, and hereThe does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:Through all the hours of night until the dawnThey sleep, forgetting fear.
The hare sleeps where it lies,With wary half-closed eyes;The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck:Only the fox is out, some heedless duckOr chicken to surprise. 50
Remote, each single starComes out, till there they areAll shining brightly: how the dews fall damp!While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lampOr twinkles from afar.
But evening now is doneAs much as if the sunDay-giving had arisen in the East:For night has come; and the great calm has ceased,The quiet sands have run. 60