All’s still; only earth turns and breathes. 
Then that amazing trembling note
Cleaves the deep wave

Of silence.  Shivers even that silvery one;
Sigh all the trees, even the cedar dark
——­O joy, and I.

THE FLUTE

It was a night of smell and dew
When very old things seemed how new;
When speech was softest in the still
Air that loitered down the hill;
When the lime’s sweetness could but creep
Like music to slow ears of sleep;
When far below the lapping sea
Lisped but of tired tranquillity.... 
No, ’twas a night that seemed almost
Of real night the little ghost,
As though a painter painted it
Out of the shallows of his wit—­
The easy air, the whispered trees,
Faint prattle of strait distant seas,
Pettiness all:  but hark, hark! 
Large and rich in the narrow dark
Music rose.  Was music never
Braver in her pure endeavour
Against the meanness of the world. 
Her purple banner she unfurled
Of stars and suns upon the night
Amazed with the strange living light. 
The notes rose where the dark trees knelt;
Their fiery joy made stillness melt
As flame in woods the low boughs burns,
Sere leaves, dry bushes, flame-shaped ferns. 
The notes rose as great birds that rise
Majestically in lofty skies,
And in white clouds are lost; and then
Briefly they hushed, and woke again
Renewed. 
            Slowly silence came
As smoke after sinking flame
That spreads and thins across the sky
When day pales before it die.

STARS

The naked stars, deep beyond deep,
Burn purely through the nerved night. 
  Over the narrow sleep
  Of men tired of light;

Deep within deep, as clouds behind
Huge grey clouds hidden gleaming rise,
  Untroubled by sharp wind
  In cold desert skies.

Cold deserts now with infinite host
Of gathered spears at watch o’er small
  Armies of men lost
  In glooms funereal.

O bitter light, all-threatening stars,
O tired ghosts of men that sleep
  After stern mortal wars
  ’Neath skies chill and steep.

These mortal hills, this flickering sea,
This shadowy and thoughtful night,
  Throb with infinity,
  Burn with immortal light.

TEN O’CLOCK AND FOUR O’CLOCK

It stands there
Tall and solitary on the edge
Of the last hill, green on the green hill. 
Ten o’clock the tree’s called, no one knows why. 
Perhaps it was planted there at ten o’clock
Or someone was hanged there at ten o’clock—­
A hundred such good reasons might be found,
But no one knows.  It vexed me that none knew,
Seeing it miles and miles off and then nearer
And nearer yet until, beneath the hill,