Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

One Night

Was it last summer, or ages gone,
   That damp, dark night in the August dusk,
When I waited for you by the gate alone?
   And the air was heavy with scents like musk.
Swiftly and silently shooting down
   Like the lonesome light of a falling star,
I saw through the shadows dense and brown,
   The dull red light of your fine cigar.

Like a king who taketh his own, you came
   Through the lowering night and the falling dew.
Like one who yields to a rightful claim,
   I waited there in the dusk for you.
Never again when the day grows late,
   Never again in the years to be,
Shall I stand in the dark and dew, and wait,
   And never again will you come to me.

But always and ever when high and far
   The old moon hideth her troubled face,
I think how the light like a falling star
   Lit all my world with a new strange grace.
The passionate glow of your splendid eyes
   Shines into my heart as it shone that night,
And its slumberous billows surge and rise
   As the ocean is stirred by the tempest’s might.

1. At Eleusis
2. Affirm
3. Intermediary
4. The Chosen
5. The Awakening (I love the tropics, where sun and rain)

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