44
He Heard her Sing.
Nocturn on nocturn dreaming while the mind floats far in the haze
And the dusk and the shadow and gleaming of a realm that has no days:
And then she sang ballads olden, ballads of love and of woe,
Love all burningly golden, grief with heart's-blood in its flow;
Those ballads of Scotland that thrill you, keen from the heart to the heart,
Till their pathos is seeming to kill you, with an exquisite bliss in the smart.
And the dusk and the shadow and gleaming of a realm that has no days:
And then she sang ballads olden, ballads of love and of woe,
Love all burningly golden, grief with heart's-blood in its flow;
Those ballads of Scotland that thrill you, keen from the heart to the heart,
Till their pathos is seeming to kill you, with an exquisite bliss in the smart.
And then we went out of the valley and over the spur of the hill,
And down by a woodland alley where the sprinkled moonlight lay still;
For the breeze in the boughs was still and the breeze was still in the sprays,
And the leaves had scarcely a thrill in the stream of the silver rays,
But looked as if drawn on the sky or etched with a graver keen,
Sharp shadows thrown from on high deep out of the azure serene:
And down by a woodland alley where the sprinkled moonlight lay still;
For the breeze in the boughs was still and the breeze was still in the sprays,
And the leaves had scarcely a thrill in the stream of the silver rays,
But looked as if drawn on the sky or etched with a graver keen,
Sharp shadows thrown from on high deep out of the azure serene:
