Killing the light,
Blurring the stars,
Marring the breeze--
Nature's many-stringed harp--
It comes
Silently, sinisterly,
Over the land, over the sea,
Spreading its beggar-raiment of brown.
Without stop, without sound,
Over the valley
Like a great serpent of silence
Coiling around the heart of sound.
A damp insidiousness
Creeps into the night;
A drab numbness sets in
Dripping in lugubrious drops
From the haggard fingers
Of the autumn trees.
It strangles the last sound,
It devours the last light,
Trembles in fear
To see its own visage;
It moves on, on, and around,
Ceaselessly, untiringly,
Till the black night is drowned
In an abyss of brown.
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In love's afterglow, full of stars,
Those lilies of the river of night,
Sing no song, dear, speak no word.
The white noontide has ebbed into gold;
Shores-breaking seas cease to roar;
Lo! the moonrise of our soul.
Hardly a kiss, or the shadow of a caress;
No decking the hour with the jasmines of touch;
But a rose-petal shivering in exquisite agony--our love.
The weary sunset has grown wearier;
A vague lassitude encircles us twain,
As separation builds its pathway of tears.
Cease weeping, yet the saffron light lingers;
The stars throb in nebulous lustre,
As our hearts to the music of desire.
What matters if winter be nigh?
We sang summer to sleep,
And autumn on its bed of leaves.
Now comes the hour of parting for us,
As the last light flickers and fades;
Even love's afterglow dying, and is dead.
Alas! thou art gone, as are the hours of day;
The hard gem-burning stars do not set! Oh,
In what dark, in what forest roamest thou?
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