Morning Twilight

By George Sterling

An early thrush acclaims the light . . .
    The wide, low-billowing day,
O'er dews and grasses chill with night,
    Upcasts its foam of grey.

Now end the darkness and its dreams.
    The broken moon is low;
Like petal-drift on glassing streams
    We watch her sink and go.

And like a dryad to her tree
    The morning star hath sped—
Vanished ere one had thought to see
    The path whereon she fled.

Hark how, as here we stand, the wards
    Of woodlands newly green,
The pine's innumerable chords
    Are touched by hands unseen!

Hearing, the forest seems forlorn
    And all the air a sigh
Of things that seek a vaster morn,
    And find it not, and die.

O tranquil hour! the haggard noon
    Shall make a ghost of thee,
Soon to be memory's, and soon
    Not e'en of memory.
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