EVENING ON THE FARM

From out the hills, where twilight stands,

Above the shadowy pasture lands,

With strained and strident cry,

Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,

The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,

And, colored like the half-ripe grape,

Seems some uneven stain

On heaven's azure, thin as crape,

And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx

O'erflares, and gates the farmboy clicks,

Through which the cattle came,

The mullein stalks seem giant wicks

Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in,

Above the streams that wandering win

From out the violet hills,

Those haunters of the dusk begin,

The whippoorwills.

Adown the dark the firefly marks

Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;

And, loosened from his chain,

The shaggy watchdog bounds and barks,

And barks again.

Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;

And now an owlet, far away,

Cries twice or thrice, “Twohoo;”

And cool dim moths of mottled gray

Flit through the dew.

The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,

Where on the woodland creek's lagoon,

Pale as a ghostly girl

Lost‘ mid the trees, looks down the moon

With face of pearl.

Within the shed where logs, late hewed,

Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood

Make blurs of white and brown,

The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood

Of teetering down.

The clattering guineas in the tree

Din for a time; and quietly

The henhouse, near the fence,

Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry

Of cocks and hens.

A cow-bell tinkles by the rails,

Where, streaming white in foaming pails,

Milk makes an uddery sound;

While overhead the black bat trails

Around and‘ round.

The night is still. The slow cows chew

A drowsy cud. The bird that flew

And sang is in its nest.

It is the time of falling dew,

Of dreams and rest.

The brown bees sleep; and‘ round the walk,

The garden path, from stalk to stalk

The bungling beetle booms,

Where two soft shadows stand and talk

Among the blooms.

The stars are thick: the light is dead

That dyed the West: and Drowsyhead,

Tuning his cricket-pipe,

Nods, and some apple, round and red,

Drops over ripe.

Now down the road, that shambles by,

A window, shining like an eye

Through climbing rose and gourd,

Shows where Toil sups and these things lie,

His heart and hoard.