Departure

THE twilight is starred,

The dawn has arisen;

Light breaks from the east

And Song from her prison.



Faint odors and sounds

The west-wind discloses

Of laughter and birds,

Of singing and roses.



It is time to be gone --

Day scatters the gloom;

But here at my side,

But still in the room,



Like the angel of life,

Too kind to depart,

You hang at my lips,

You hang at my heart!

John Hall Wheelock

Sunday Evening in the Common

[Van Wyck Brooks - the Van Wyck mentioned in the last stanza, was Wheelock's college roommate at Harvard; the two published 'Verses of Two Undergraduates' in 1905 --Steve]

LOOK—on the topmost branches of the world

     The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;

     Over the huddled rows of stone and brick,

A few, sad wisps of empty smoke are curled

     Like ghosts, languid and sick.



One breathless moment now the city's moaning

     Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim;

     There is no sound around the whole world's rim,

Save in the distance a small band is droning

     Some desolate old hymn.



Van Wyck, how often have we been together

     When this same moment made all mysteries clear;

     —The infinite stars that brood above us here,

And the gray city in the soft June weather,

     So tawdry and so dear!

John Hall Wheelock