Classic Poem

Slowly , with grateful calm, the night has come,
And the exultant life which filled the air
With fanning wings and song and sound is dumb;
Each piping pleasurer has found its lair,
And sleep and utter peace reign everywhere.

There is no stir of wind among the leaves,
And not one wrinkle on the darkling stream;
The reeds stand motionless in clustered sheaves,
And through the shades the water-lilies gleam,
Floating, enfolded in a languorous dream.

From many flowers that nestle out of sight
In dewy lawns and dusky thicket-dells,
Commingled odors tremble through the night,
So faint, so subtly sweet, they seem like swells
Of thin ethereal music from their bells.

Sweet is the cool, fresh fragrance of the grass,
The spicy incense of the firs and pines;
And sweet the dead leaves, rustled where I pass,
The humid breath of moss and creeping vines,
And vapory marshes where the fen-fire shines.

Through leaf-fringed oriels rifted in the gloom,
Glimpses of limpid azure glimmer down,
Serenely clear, and hazed with pearly bloom
Of clustered stars, like golden grain thick strown,
And nebulous pale tresses backward blown.

Rapt in the odorous solitude and calm,
I feel the joy of far primeval nights,
When on his tower the Sabean wrought his charm,
And shepherd-watchers on Ausonian heights
Wove legends from the constellated lights.

And some night-lover of a future race,
Loitering beneath new glooms of branch and bough;
And haply gazing through some verdurous space,
Shall pause and watch Orion rising slow
In silent ecstacy—as I do now.