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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse  »  Marjorie L. C. Pickthall (1883–1922)

The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse

Evening

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall (1883–1922)

WHEN the white iris folds the drowsing bee,

When the first cricket wakes

The fairy hosts of his enchanted brakes,

When the dark moth has sought the lilac tree,

And the young stars, like jasmine of the skies,

Are opening on the silence, Lord, there lies

Dew on Thy rose and dream upon mine eyes.

Lovely the day, when life is robed in splendour,

Walking the ways of God and strong with wine,

But the pale eve is wonderful and tender,

And night is more divine.

Fold my faint olives from their shimmering plain,

O shadows of sweet darkness fringed with rain.

Give me tonight again.

Give me today no more. I have bethought me

Silence is more than laughter, sleep than tears.

Sleep like a lover faithfully hath sought me

Down the enduring years.

Where stray the first white fatlings of the fold,

Where the Lent-lily droops her earlier gold

Sleep waits me as of old.

Grant me sweet sleep, for light is unavailing

When patient eyes grow weary of the day.

Young lambs creep close and tender wings are failing,

And I grow tired as they.

Light as the long wave leaves the lonely shore,

Our boughs have lost the bloom that morning bore.

Give me today no more.