And _now_--the moon hangs over me A disk of dazzling brilliancy, And every star-tip stabs my sight With splintered glitterings of light!
The air falls chill; The whip-poor-will Pipes lonesomely behind the hill: The dusk grows dense, The silence tense; And lo, the katydids commence.
Through shadowy rifts Of woodland, lifts The low, slow moon, and upward drifts, While left and right The fireflies' light Swirls eddying in the skirts of Night.
O Cloudland, gray And level, lay Thy mists across the face of Day! At foot and head, Above the dead, O Dews, weep on uncomforted!
I caught but a glimpse of him. Summer was here, And I strayed from the town and its dust and heat And walked in a wood, while the noon was near, Where the shadows were cool, and the atmosphere Was misty with fragrances stirred by my feet From surges of blossoms that billowed sheer O'er the grasses, green and sweet.
And I peered through a vista of leaning trees, Tressed with long tangles of vines that swept To the face of a river, that answered these With vines in the wave like the vines in the breeze, Till the yearning lips of the ripples crept And kissed them, with quavering ecstacies, And gurgled and laughed and wept.
And there, like a dream in a swoon, I swear I saw Pan lying,--his limbs in the dew And the shade, and his face in the dazzle and glare Of the glad sunshine; while everywhere, Over, across, and around him blew Filmy dragonflies hither and there, And little white butterflies, two and two, In eddies of odorous air.
"He shall sleep unscathed of thieves Who loves Allah and believes." Thus heard one who shared the tent, In the far-off Orient, Of the Bedouin ben Ahrzz-- Nobler never loved the stars Through the palm-leaves nigh the dim Dawn his courser neighed to him!
He said: "Let the sands be swarmed With such thieves as I, and thou Shalt at morning rise, unharmed, Light as eyelash to the brow Of thy camel, amber-eyed, Ever munching either side, Striding still, with nestled knees, Through the midnight's oases.
"Who can rob thee an thou hast More than this that thou hast cast At my feet--this dust of gold? Simply this and that, all told! Hast thou not a treasure of Such a thing as men call love?
"Can the dusky band I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal? Who could be enriched of thee By such hoard of poverty As thy niggard hand pretends To dole me--thy worst of friends? Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee; Robbing thee, I dispossess But myself.--Pray thou for me!"