The Star-Treader and Other Poems

Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark,

How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest!

Forever its voice is a voice of the dark,

Forever its voice is a voice of unrest.

Oh, list to the pines as they shiver and sway

'Neath the ceaseless beat of its myriad wings—

How they moan and they sob like living things

That cry in the darkness for light and day!

Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher,

And its eerie voice comes piercingly,

Like the plaint of humanity's misery,

And its burden of vain desire.

Now to a sad, tense whisper it fails,

Then wildly and madly it raves and it wails.

Oh, the night is filled with its sob and its shriek,

Its weird and its restless, yearning cry,

As it races adown the darkened sky,

With scurry of broken clouds that seek,

Borne on the wings of the hastening wind,

A place of rest that they never can find.

And around the face of the moon they cling,

Its fugitive face to veil they aspire;

But ever and ever it peereth out,

Rending the cloud-ranks that hem it about;

And it seemeth a lost and phantom thing,

Like a phantom of dead desire.