Seven Songs

Softly along the road of evening,	 
    In a twilight dim [with]1 rose,	 
Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew	 
    Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.	 
  
His drowsy flock streams on before him,	
    Their fleeces charged with gold,	 
To where the sun's last beam leans low	 
    On Nod the shepherd's fold.	 
  
The hedge is quick and green with briar,	 
    From their sand the conies creep;
And all the birds that fly in heaven	 
    Flock singing home to sleep.	 
  
His lambs outnumber a noon's roses,	 
    Yet, when night's shadows fall,	 
His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon,
    Misses not one of all.	 
  
His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,	 
    The waters of no-more-pain;	 
His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,	 
    "Rest, rest, and rest again."

From Mantua's meadows to Imperial Rome
Came Virgil, with the wood-light in his eyes,
Browned by the suns that round his hillside home
Burned on the chestnuts and the ilices.
And these he left, and left the fallows where
The slow streams freshened many a bank of thyme,
To found a city in the Roman air,
And build the epic turrets in a rhyme.
But were the woodland dieties forgot,
Pan, Sylvan, and the sister nymphs for whom
He poured his melody the fields along?
They gave him for his faith a happy lot:
The waving of the meadows in his song
And the spontaneous laurel at his tomb.

Into the brilliant air you leap
 [ ... ]

In this meadow starred with spring
Shepherds kneel before their king.
Mary throned, with dreaming eyes,
Gowned in blue like rain-washed skies,
Lifts her tiny son that he
May behold their courtesy.
And green-smocked children, awed and good,
Bring him blossoms from the wood.

Clear the sunlit steeples chime
Mary's coronation-time.
Loud the happy children quire
To the golden-windowed morn;
While the lord of their desire
Sleeps below the crimson thorn.

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inward melody
She paces to.

Each narrow hoof is lifted high
Beneath the dark enclustering pines,
A silver ray within his bit
And bridle shines.

His eye burns deep, his tail is arched,
And streams upon the shadowy air,
The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks,
His mistress' hair.

Her habit flows in darkness down,
Upon the stirrup rests her foot,
Her brow is lifted, as if earth
She heeded not.

'Tis silent in the avenue,
The sombre pines are mute of song,
The blue is dark, there moves no breeze
The boughs among.

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inward melody
She paces to.

Golden stockings you had on
 [ ... ]