nd

With music of so strange a sound

And beauty of so wild a birth—

Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly—

And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.

'Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits harken) as one1

Who, in a dream of night, would fly

But cannot from a danger nigh.

What tho' the moon—the white moon

Shed all the splendor of her noon,

Her smile is chilly—and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one—

For all we live to know is known

And all we seek to keep hath flown—

Let life, then