STREET LAMPS

GOLD, with an innermost speck

Of silver, singing afloat

Beneath the night,

Like balls of thistle-down

Wandering up and down

Over the whispering town

Seeking where to alight!

Slowly, above the street

Above the ebb of feet

Drifting in flight;

Still, in the purple distance

The gold of their strange persistence

As they cross and part and meet

And pass out of sight!

The seed-ball of the sun

Is broken at last, and done

Is the orb of day.

Now to the separate ends

Seed after day-seed wends

A separate way.

No sun will ever rise

Again on the wonted skies

In the midst of the spheres.

The globe of the day, over-ripe,

Is shattered at last beneath the stripe

Of the wind, and its oneness veers

Out myriad-wise.

Seed after seed after seed

Drifts over the town, in its need

To sink and have done;

To settle at last in the dark,

To bury its weary spark

Where the end is begun.

Darkness, and depth of sleep,

Nothing to know or to weep

Where the seed sinks in

To the earth of the under-night

Where all is silent, quite

Still, and the darknesses steep

Out all the sin.