My spirit was like the lonely air <br />Before night, <br />Like hovering cloud that's melted there <br />In the late light, <br />When slow the vast earth--shadows reach <br />To the last flush, <br />And the wandering silences have each <br />Their own hush. <br /> <br />Did the green grass about me glimmer, <br />Or trees tower? <br />Not softer to my sense, nor dimmer, <br />The obscure power <br />Of all the world's wide trouble, fought <br />In the heart's recess: <br />My heart was solitude, my thought <br />Emptiness. <br /> <br />But through my spirit that seemed, unfilled, <br />Alone to float, <br />A sudden dewy sweetness thrilled; <br />A low note! <br />And then a loud note, rippling full <br />To a still pause: <br />The liquid silence was a pool <br />That a breeze flaws. <br /> <br />It throbbed again, how lonely clear! <br />A song that seemed <br />Sprung beyond memory or fear, <br />A voice dreamed <br />In a land that no man ever found; <br />And who knows <br />What shook those lingering drops of sound <br />At the rich close? <br /> <br />Ah, where were you, passion and grief <br />Of the world's wrong? <br />What had you to do with a trembling leaf <br />And a bird's song, <br />And spaces calm with coming of night, <br />And the fresh gloom <br />Of shadowy trees, and smelt delight <br />Of hidden bloom? <br /> <br />Yet O, in me that song had part <br />Because of you! <br />It drank of the very blood of the heart <br />It quivered through <br />Because of the tears of joy, and the cost <br />Of a joy's breath, <br />Measureless thoughts of a dearness lost, <br />Hope, and death. <br /> <br />Strangeness of longing, beauty, pain! <br />I was aware <br />Of all your secret, soft as rain, <br />In the dim air. <br />For Life it was that sang aloud <br />To the lone dew, <br />Brave in the night and sweet in the cloud: <br />My heart knew.<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-prelude-at-evening/
