Page:Songs and Sonnets (1906).djvu/136



night had brooded long, the air was chill,
 * Across the open fields the frost bit deep,
 * The restless, formless mists, that seemed to creep

Like ghostly wraiths, had swallowed up the hill; The sombre pines had ceased their plaint of ill
 * But yet uplifted pleading arms, the sheep
 * And stiff-kneed kine were huddled half asleep,

And all the forest hung inert and still;

When on the silence fell a tenser hush,
 * A film of grayness smote the dark and spread,

And slowly in the east a trembling flush
 * Shot upward, till the sullen mists, withdrawn,
 * Showed all the vanquished shadows fled,
 * And myriad heralds cried, "The Dawn! the Dawn!"