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Home  »  Anthology of Massachusetts Poets  »  Evensong

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

Evensong

A SHEPHERD piping, herald of the Night

Who comes with Silence up the coloured vale,

Treading low gently, clad in greyish white,

Poignantly piping, sound your reedy wail!

For Day departed moves in funeral train

Tended by Twilight and, in deepest rose,

The splendid Sunset melts beneath the main

While sweet the Sea-wind with cool softness blows.

As when a mother gathers to her breast

The child who frets for Day’s remembered smart,

Now Light fades quickly in the ashen west,

And Night-Peace falls across my troubled heart.

Flutes, for the night through let my mind be still,

And God keep safe with Him my stubborn will!