It was evening, and we came to the country over the hill,
A valley of ancient homes and fields with shadowy trees.
The south-west wind was soft with the breath of the south-west seas;
Our unknown pathway followed the wandering song of a rill.
Flowers we knew in the homeland bordered the unknown way;
Things we had known and loved in the paths we had left behind,
Only these we found,--the song of the south-west wind,
Gold of the evening, rose of the sunset, twilight grey.
But the way, the way was unknown, and each turn of the way unguessed,
And the spell of the unforeseen transfigured the things we knew,
And filled the whispering woods and the flowers that hung in the dew,
And dreamed on the darkening hills and the roselit cloud in the west.
Twilight fell on the land, and clear against vistas dim
Near things stood large,--the towers of ancient elms
Loomed on glimmering fields, dark keeps of shadowy realms;
And the first stars shone in the eastern sky on the upland’s rim.
One by one around us, golden lights in the dusk
Glowed in many a window of unseen cottage and farm:
And sweet through the cool of the dew came ripples of air still warm
From the shelter of old walled gardens that breathed of honey and musk.
We came to a little village and our rest at the long day’s close:
The stars shone over the street where the folk were lingering still;
The stars looked down on the stars in the dark pool under the mill;
The infinite deeps of the heaven were touched with the earth’s repose.
Bright heavenly tracts outshone; but never a way so sweet
As a homely path on the earth where the wild flowers hid in the dew,
And a girl went home through the fields, and the darkness thrilled
with a clue
That linked the loneliest star with the flowers she touched with
her feet.
And pleasant it was to rest awhile in that old-world nook,
And dream of the unknown way and the country over the hill,
While the stars shone down on our beds, and the village street was still,
And sleep came over the fields in the wandering song of the brook.