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WHAT things
for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among
tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the
stubble field,
From which the laborers' voices late
have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And
rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's
side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so
many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of the
hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I
dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
Each
circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging
headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat's
mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my
secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On the
last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of
odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my
advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his
instrument,
And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be
there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I
brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And
freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on
the memory of one absent most,
For whom these lines
when they shall greet her eye.
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