With the soft murmur of the mossy rills.
It was the month when earth is debonnaire;
The lilies were in flower upon the hills.

Night compassed Boaz' slumber and Ruth's dreams,
The sheep-bells vaguely tinkled far and near;
Infinite love breathed from the starry sphere;
'Twas the still hour when lions seek the streams.

Ur and Jerimedeth were all at rest;
The stars enamelled the blue vault of sky;
Amid those flowers of darkness in the west
The crescent shone; and with half open eye

Ruth wondered, moveless, in her veils concealed,
What heavenly reaper, when the day was done
And harvest gathered in, had idly thrown
That golden sickle on the starry field.'


II. DREAM AND SYMBOL

The rise of French symbolism towards the end of the 'seventies was a
symptom of a changed temper of thought and feeling traceable in some
degree throughout civilized Europe. Roughly, it marked the passing of
the confident and rather superficial security of the 'fifties into a
vague unrest, a kind of troubled awe. As if existence altogether was a
bigger, more mysterious, and intractable thing than was assumed, not so
easily to be captured in the formulas of triumphant science, or mirrored
and analysed by the most consummate literary art.