By sunlight or by starlight ever thou
Art excellent in beauty manifold;
The still star victory ever gems thy brow;
Age cannot age thee, ages make thee old.
Thy beauty brightens with the evening sun
Across the long-lit meads and distant spire:
So sleep thou well—like his thy labour done;
Rest in thy glory as he rests in fire.
But even in this hour of soft repose
A gentle sadness chides us like a friend—
The sorrow of the joy that overflows,
The burden of the beauty that must end.
And from the fading sunset comes a cry,
And in the twilight voices wailing past,
Like wild-swans calling, "When we rest we die,
And woe to them that linger and are last";
And as the Sun sinks, sudden in heav'n new born
There shines an armèd Angel like a Star,
Who cries above the darkling world in scorn,
"God comes to Judgment. Learn ye what ye are."
From fire to umber fades the sunset-gold,
From umber into silver and twilight;
The infant flowers their orisons have told
And turn together folded for the night;
The garden urns are black against the eve;
The white moth flitters through the fragrant glooms;
How beautiful the heav'ns!—But yet we grieve
And wander restless from the lighted rooms.
For through the world to-night a murmur thrills
As at some new-born prodigy of time—
Peace dies like twilight bleeding on the hills,
And Darkness creeps to hide the hateful crime.