An orange warmth of after-sunset floods

The darkening hills, and then the twilight-swoon

Comes gathering in with eve's unnumbered buds

Dimly-pulsating to the blossomed moon.

The after-silence of the last lone bird

Which twitters a pale drop of note and stops

The whole night long, is like a depth of word

Which from some lonely poet's being drops

Into an after-life of hush complete,

Or like a burning star of sound which comes

Out of the aeons like a twinkled beat

Drowned in the depths of dark milleniums.

Out of the silvern dark the ocean rolls;

Its billows to my visioned soul respond

How like a giant rhythm-roll of souls

Met at a festival of diamond.

There is a brooding silence in the air

Welled from the winged Farness on whose rim

Dawn-colours all invisibly prepare

Bright pinioned majesties of seraphim.

One cloud moves slowly yonder like a blotch

Of silver-edged gloom which seeks and seeks.

Here from my plot of earth I sit and watch

The night, the motherhood of glows and streaks.

How mighty is the universe;–the sky,

The cloud, the star, the water and the night!

But mightier than each of these am I

Who do contain in me both dark and light.