THE NIGHT WATCH

Beneath the trees with heedful step and slow

At night I go,

Fearful upon their whispering to break

Lest they awake

Out of those dreams of heavenly light that fill

Their branches still

With a soft murmur of memoried ecstasy.

There‘ neath each tree

Nightlong a spirit watches, and I feel

His breath unseal

The fast-shut thoughts and longings of tired day,

That flutter away

Mothlike on luminous soft wings and frail

And moonlike pale.

There in the flowering chestnuts’ bowering gloom

And limes’ perfume

Wandering wavelike through the moondrawn night

That heaves toward light,

There hang I my dark thoughts and deeper prayers;

And as the airs

Of star-kissed dawn come stirring and o'er-creep

The ford of sleep,

Thy shape, great Love, grows shadowy in the East,

Thine accents least

Of all those warring voices of false morn:

And oh, forlorn

Thy hope, thy courage vanishing, thine eyes

Sad with surprise.

Oh, with the dawn I know, I know how vain

Is love that's fain

To beat and beat against her obstinate door.

For as once more

It groans, she passes out not heeding me,

Nay, will not see:—

As when a man, rich and of high estate,

Sees at his gate

( Or will not see ) a famishing poor wretch,

Whose longings fetch

Old anger from his pain-imprisoning breast,

Till sad despair his anger puts to rest.