An early thrush acclaims the light—
The wide, low-billowing day
O’er dews and grasses chill with night
Upcasts its foam of grey.
Now end the darkness and its dreams.
The ashen moon is low;
Like petal-drift on placid streams
We watch her sink and go.
And like a dryad to her tree
The morning star hath sped—
Gone ere an eye essayed to see
The path whereon she fled.
Hark how, as here we stand the wards
Of woodlands newly green,
The pine’s innumerable chords
Are touched by hands unseen!
Hearing, the forest seems forlorn
And all the air a sigh
Of things that seek a vaster morn,
And find it not, and die.
O tranquil hour! the haggard noon
Shall make a ghost of thee
Soon to be memory’s, and soon
Not even of memory.