 | The poet, the fool and the faeries |  |
119
THE OLD BAYOU
The rosy egret, Sunset,Wings up the moss-gray skies;
And creeping under clouds, the Dusk,
A burning beetle, dies.
Round cypress, oak, and willow
A raucous music cries,
And from the water, dark beneath,
The mist's white shadows rise.
And glimmering down the bayou,
With starlight-twinkling eyes,
The Twilight oars her blue canoe
Pale-prowed with fireflies.
Her owlet call the Darkness
Utters in vague surmise;
Then with a sibilant voice afar
The bayou Hush replies.
Now Night the cricket hinges
Of her old doorway tries,
And stealing through the House of Dreams
Sleep to the silence sighs.
Wide to the dark one window
She flings, and from it flies
A moth—the round, white, wandering Moon,
Whose ghostly image lies
120
In strangely shimmering wise—
A phantom barque with a phantom maid,
Who a phantom paddle plies.
| The poet, the fool and the faeries | |