When sets the sun on yonder hill
His white clouds slowly follow him;
Hours have they to linger still.
Mountain-pastured, cool and dim.

When at last the folded sky
Waiting dumbly for the stars,
Lets the wool-winged phantom fly,
Lures the great owl from his bars.

Then the little grass-lamp glows,
And the blackest snails untwine;
And the cautious hedgehog goes
Under the light-uddered kine.

But the tribes of haunted night,
Omened bird and bat and toad,
They must out of sound and sight
Where shepherd takes the road;

His white flocks are on the hill,
Hours they have to wait for him,
While the wool-winged bat is still,
And the great owl’s eyelids dim.