Meditações: cai a noite

AN EVENING IN SUSSEX

Ah, Hesperus ! the even falls
From silences to silences,
As when a diver drops at ease
Far down the waters to the halls
Of Thetis and her silver seas,
Beholding through the delicate mist
The colours shifting by degrees
From purple into amethyst.

Across the pure pellucid dale
The shingled spire so darkly stands
Against the gold and crimson bands,
Methinks it were not hard to tell
How points the clock his brazen hands,
Or if the arrow warns us well.
The vane that looks across the lands
The rising winds to sentinel.

Hark in the twilight ! — was it sound
Of bell, or bird, or rustling tree ?
It is the children, homeward bound.
Some little comrade they have crowned
The monarch of their revelry ;
Their laughter floats along the hill,
What horseman comes so late to ride
The solitary stages? Now
His hoofs are on the steep hill-side,
Now loud and full upon the brow,
Now faintly dying down the hollow:
How many a mile the moon has shown,
Fast dwindling on the friendly stone.
And yet and yet his steed must follow
The road that runs, so white and lone,
Between dark avenues of trees,
Towards the southern villages.

The heavens are like a deep lagoon
In some unfathomable sea.
Where with majestic sail the moon
Sweeps, like a galleon, to the tune
Of oarsmen bending silently.
Her full bright face is clear and cold,
As silver touched with palest gold ;
Her liveried henchmen of the night,
Rose-tinged and gold, and chrysolite.
Move on her errands manifold.
And come and pass and ply their wings
In sweet ethereal wanderings.

Unto what thing shall I compare
So sweet a sight, so strange, so rare,
Or fruit, or flower, or lady fair ?
Around her, in a girdling band.
White companies of clouds are spread,
As in the North snow mountains stand,
Encompassing a silver land
Upon a blue lake islanded ;
Or moving now before her face,
As babes that in the twilight play
About their mother's feet, nor less
As goats around their shepherdess
In most delightful pastures stray.

The light is on the laurel leaves ;
With such a glow it seems to fall
Upon the gables and the eaves,
It looks so pure, so chaste, so holy,
That I could half believe the Hall
Were some old convent mystical.
Haunted by cloistered melancholy.

Come to me, gentle lady mine.
That hast not any part or name
In this our mortal world, — divine
And yet most tender; come the same
As I have seen thee when the beams
Grew softer in the silent grace
Of thy sweet coming ; with the face
That I have worshipped in my dreams,
Come to me ! 'Tis the hour ; and now
There's something tells me thou art near;
It is thy footfall I can hear ;
Thy lips are pressed upon ray brow;
Thy breath is in the garden scents
That float so softly in the air;
And all of nature seems to wear
The impress of thy lineaments.

Say not it is the rustling tree,
Whose leaves the soulless breezes stir
Amid the beech-wood ! Come to me !
It is thy voice that bids me be
Thy poet, thine interpreter.
Or if indeed in yon white star,
Where love and life and beauty are
More true, more tender, more intense.
Thy spiritual home I see.
Stretch out thine hand and bear me hence !
O blessed Lady, take me far
Unto the haunts of innocence !
So for a little space I flee
From my false self, and dwell with thee.

William John Courthope