COME earth's little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill; <br />Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil. <br />In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along <br />Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song. <br />All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away <br />Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day. <br />Night comes; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly in her flight <br />Where the fiery dust of evening, shaken from the feet of light, <br />Thrusts its monstrous barriers between the pure, the good, the true, <br />That our weeping eyes may strain for, but shall never after view. <br />Only yester eve I watched with heart at rest the nebulæ <br />Looming far within the shadowy shining of the Milky Way; <br />Finding in the stillness joy and hope for all the sons of men; <br />Now what silent anguish fills a night more beautiful than then: <br />For earth's age of pain has come, and all her sister planets weep, <br />Thinking of her fires of morning passing into dreamless sleep. <br />In this cycle of great sorrow for the moments that we last <br />We too shall be linked by weeping to the greatness of her past: <br />But the coming race shall know not, and the fount of tears shall dry, <br />And the arid heart of man be arid as the desert sky. <br />So within my mind the darkness dawned, and round me everywhere <br />Hope departed with the twilight, leaving only dumb despair.<br /><br />George William Russell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dawn-of-darkness/
