One by one the flowers close, Lily and dewy rose Shutting their tender petals from the moon: The dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bits Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime; From far the lowings come Of cattle driven home: From farther still the wind brings fitfully The gnats whirl in the air, The evening gnats, and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth clammy and bare. Hark! that's the nightingale, Telling the self-same tale Her song told when this ancient earth was young; So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale. We call it love and pain The passion of her strain; And yet we little understand or know: In separate herds the deer Lie; here the bucks, and here. The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn: The hare sleeps where it lies With wary half-closed eyes; The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck : Remote, each single star Comes out, till there they are All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp! Or twinkles from afar. But evening now is done. As much as if the sun Day-giving had arisen in the east: For night has come, and the great calm has ceased, The quiet sands have run. Christina Rossetti. A SUMMER EVE. Down the sultry are of day The burning wheels have urged their way, Spreads her intermingling dyes, Down the deep, the miry lane, The barn is still, the master's gone, Now for Jack, when near home, tarries; If the horse-trough be not dry. The milk is settled in the pans, And supper messes in the cans; The snare for Mister Fox is set, Now on the settle all, but Bess, |