War Drums (Scharkie)/The Rustling of the Leaves

by Louis Edward Scharkie

THE RUSTLING OF THE LEAVES.

On purple ladders, down the west descending,
Day stept his lonely journey to his bed;
And as a tired child, when dreams are blending
Their odours round his head,

Closed, slow, his golden eyes, and fell asleep.
And out upon the twilight, one lone star,
Like a big tear-drop on the golden deep,
Gleamed o'er the twilight bar.

And winds woke up their gentlest harps—such harps
As play as evenglow,—when sunset lights
Are fading back from silent gorge and scarps,
And far forsaken heights.

Above me, in the linden, I could hear
The rustling memories of other days,
Trailing like ships upon a wooded mere,
In floating folds of haze.

Or burning stars gone down in midnight deeps,
Or ebbing songs that chase the fleeing lark,
Or sunset lights far-fading from cold steeps,
And dying in the dark.

Ripplings of happy dreams, of sunshine hours,
Of nights of stars, and days with clouds o'ercast,
Of moonbeams quivering through life's full flowers,
And voices of the past.

And where are they?—all silent in their grim
Cold resting places,—voiceless, lorn, and fled?
Yea!—silent, cold, and pallid as weird, dim,
Dead echoes of the dead.

My sun sets now in other lands,—o'er meres
Where sounds all night the plover's mournful wail;
And morning's wooded walks are drenched with tears,
And noonday lashed with hail.

Where night grows all aglow with stars; and moons
Swathe far-off misty seas with pallid beams;
And wood-winds hush their leafy-throated tunes,
And die like voiceless dreams.