Duncan Campbell Scott

The Voice and the Dusk

THE slender moon and one pale star,
  A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god's garden blown afar,
  Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

Within the south there rolls and grows
  A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
  The lightning flashes diamond fire.

The purple martin darts about
  The purlieus of the iris fen;
The king-bird rushes up and out,
  He screams and whirls and screams again.

A thrush is hidden in a maze
  Of cedar buds and tamarac bloom,
He throws his rapid flexile phrase,
  A flash of emeralds in the gloom.

A voice is singing from the hill
  A happy love of long ago;
Ah! tender voice, be still, be still,
  ''Tis sometimes better not to know.'

The rapture from the amber height
  Floats tremblingly along the plain,
Where in the reeds with fairy light
  The lingering fireflies gleam again.

Buried in dingles more remote,
  Or drifted from some ferny rise,
The swooning of the golden throat
  Drops in the mellow dusk and dies.

A soft wind passes lightly drawn,
  A wave leaps silverly and stirs
The rustling sedge, and then is gone
  Down the black cavern in the firs.