The light is drawn out of the leaves and grass, <br />And the sweet flowers grow pale in the gray air, <br />As if their beauty's essence e'en did pass <br />With the departing light from all things fair, <br />As the sap in the trees when summer's fled <br />Draws back to the earth, leaving the leaves dead. <br />The sky becomes a cloud, the hills a shade, <br />As the mysterious darkness fills the sphere, <br />A monstrous elf whose tentacles are laid <br />In silence upon all things far and near; <br />Now the bats flit about the mothy damp <br />In which the spiders weave their airy camp. <br />I, too, could fill as 'twere a dreamy bed <br />Under the green leaves in the darkness now, <br />And watch the evening planet overhead <br />Like a dewdrop upon the airy bough <br />Of heaven tremble — till my soul too grew <br />Like liquid light in water, shining through. <br />And I can feel that which the dead inherit — <br />Peace, and the power to forego the pain <br />That like a vulture on the human spirit <br />Draws its fine essence from the fading brain, <br />Till every sense contracts, and the slow breath <br />Oozes away in the desire of death. <br />So from me slips the day's disquietude, <br />And I am made one with the night, as those <br />Who pass from thought into a faery mood <br />On Lethe's wharf, whenas old Charon goes <br />Into the dusk of that eternal eve <br />Where all must go when the earth-light they leave.<br /><br />Robert Crawford<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/evening-42/
