Classic Poem

A sudden pang contracts the heart of Day,
As fades the glory of the sunken sun.
The bats replace the swallows one by one;
The cries of playing children die away.

Like one in pain, a bell begins to sway;
A few white oxen, from their labour done,
Pass ghostly through the dusk; the crone that spun
Beside her door, turns in, and all grows grey.

And still I lie, as I all day have lain,
Here in this garden, thinking of the time
Before the years of helplessness and pain;

Or playing with the fringes of a rhyme,
Until the yellow moon, amid her train
Of throbbing stars, appears o'er yonder lime.