Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/471

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THE WHIPPOORWILL

Above long woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread, The west was hot geranium-red; And still, and still, Along old lanes, the locusts sow With clustered curls the Maytimes know, Out of the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe Of "whippoorwill!" of "whippoorwill!" Beneath the idle beechen boughs We heard the cowbells of the cows Come slowly jangling toward the house, And still, and still, Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky, Beyond the evening star s white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of "whippoorwill!" of " whippoorwill I " What is there in the moon, that swims A naked bosom o er the limbs, That all the wood with magic dims? While still, while still, Among the trees whose shadows grope Mid ferns and flowers the dewdrops ope, Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-scented slope, Retreats, despairing past all hope, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.