Nightfall by John Frederick Freeman — Stanza

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Nightfall

by John Frederick Freeman

I

Eve goes slowly

Dancing lightly

Clad with shadow up the hills;

Birds their singing

Cease at last, and silence

Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry

Stirs the stillness

Perfect as broad water sleeping,

Not a moth's wings

Flit in the gathering darkness,

Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines

From the casement,

Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,

Palely golden

As the late eve's primrose,

Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.

II

Only joy now

Come in silence,

Come before your look's forgot;

Come and hearken

While the lonely shadow

Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,

Here the place is,

Here am I who saw thee here.

Evening darkens

All is still and marvellous,

Now the sharp stars in the deep sky peer.

Come and fill me

As the wind fills

Leafy wide boughs of a tree;

Come and windlike

Cleanse my slumbrous branches,

Come and moonlike bathe the leaves of me.

III

Eve has gone and

Night follows,

Every bush is now a ghost;

Every tree looms

Lofty large and sombre;

All day's simple friendliness is lost.

See the poplars

Black in blackness,

In all their leaves there is no sigh.

'Neath that darkling

Cedar who dare wander

Now, or under the vast oak would lie!...

Till that tingling

Silence broken

Every clod renews its breath;

Birds, leaves, grasses

Heave as one, then sleep on

Full of sweeter sleep and unlike death.

IV

Only joy now

Come like music

Falling clear from strings of light;

Come like shadow

Drinking up late sunrays,

Come like moonrays sweeping the round night.

See how night is

Opening flowerlike:

Open so thy bosom to me.

See how earth falls

Easeful into silence:

Let my moth-wing'd thought so fall on thee.

While the lamp's beam

Primrose golden

Now is like a shifting spear

Borne in battle,

Seen awhile then hidden,

Bold then beaten--now long lost, and here!