A PAUSE OF THOUGHT. I looked for that which is not, nor can be, And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth : But years must pass before a hope of youth Is resigned utterly. I watched and waited with a steadfast will: And though the object seemed to flee away I watched and waited still. Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more; My expectation wearies and shall cease; I will resign it now and be at peace : Sometimes I said: It is an empty name I long for; to a name why should I give The peace of all the days I have to live ?— Yet gave it all the same. Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit For healthy joy and salutary pain: Thou knowest the chase useless, and again Turnest to follow it. Grow TWILIGHT CALM. Oh, pleasant eventide ! Clouds on the western side 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 wood The stock-doves sit and brood: The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough but lazily; pauses; and settles now Where once he stored his food. One by one the flowers close, Lily and dewy rose Shutting their tender petals from the moon : The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon Are still the noisy crows. The dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bits Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime; Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time. And listens where he sits. From far the lowings come Of cattle driven home: From farther still the wind brings fitfully The vast continual murmur of the sea, Now loud, now almost dumb. The gnats whirl in the air, The evening gnats; and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, clammy and bare. H Her Hark! that's the nightingale, Telling the selfsame tale song told when this ancient earth was young: So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale. We call it love and pain The passion of her strain ; And yet we little understand or know : Why should it not be rather joy that so In separate herds the deer Lie; here the bucks, and here The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn : Through all the hours of night until the dawn. They sleep, forgetting fear. |