VII

When voices sink in twilight silences,
Like swimmers in a sea of quietude,
And faint farewells re-echo from the hill;
When the last thrush his sleepy vesper says,
And the lost threnody of the whip-poor-will
Gropes through the gathering shadows in the wood;

Then in the paths where dusk fades into grey,
And sighing shapes stir that I never see,
I follow still a quest of old despair
To find at last,--ah, but I cannot say,
Except that I have known a face somewhere,
And loved in times beyond all memory.

O soulless face! white flash in solitude,
Forgotten phantom of a moonless night,
Shall I kiss thy sad mouth once again, or wait
Drowned beneath fathoms of a tideless mood
Until the stars flee through the western gate
Driven in shivering fear before the light?

Cambridge, 1916


VIII

When noon is blazing on the town,
The fields are loud with droning flies,