Twilight

A sudden pang contracts the heart of Day,

As fades the glory of the sunken sun.

The bats replace the swallows one by one;

The cries of playing children die away.

Like one in pain, a bell begins to sway;

A few white oxen, from their labour done,

Pass ghostly through the dusk; the crone that spun

Beside her door, turns in, and all grows grey.

And still I lie, as I all day have lain,

Here in this garden, thinking of the time

Before the years of helplessness and pain;

Or playing with the fringes of a rhyme,

Until the yellow moon, amid her train

Of throbbing stars, appears o'er yonder lime.