Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/479

EVENTIDE Of which in Paradise aware

Saints count their years but days.

For they sang such music as, I deem,

In God's chief court of joys,

Had stayed the flow of the crystal stream

And made souls in mid-flight poise;

They sang of Glory to Him most High,

Of Peace on Earth abidingly,

And of all delights the which, men dream,

Nor sin nor grief alloys.

Breathless the kneeling shepherds heard,

Charmed from their first rude fear,

Nor while that music dwelt had stirred

Were it a month or year:

And Mary Mother drank its flow,

Couched with her Babe divine,—and, lo!

Ere falls the last ecstatic word

Three Holy Kings draw near.

Whenas the star-led shining train

Wheeled from their task complete,

Skyward from over Bethlehem's plain

They sped with rapture fleet;

And the angel of that orient star,

Thenceforth where Heaven's lordliest are,

Stands with a harp, while Christ doth reign,

A seraph near His feet.

EVENTIDE

sunset fires old Portsmouth spires,

Out creeps the ebbing tide;

Beyond the battery-point I see

A glimmering schooner glide; 449