This Even I Was Walking Solitaire

This even I was walking solitaire Green, olive-green the trees incorporated In to the growing darkness like impending thieves Stood where I passed lined like sentinels Or like the guards in silent parade stretched. The water gurgled in the turning mill A leaf falls to the ground all silently: The rest is silence. And from a distant tree I heard a voice First indistinct then uttering syllables Which I understood and not: then more Distinct and understandable and nearer The Voice grew. I heard. It was the Muse. As from a sacred tree She stood and spoke: My loved Poet to-night I hest That you pluck one of the night’s stars And bring it to me here shining bright. To which I answered: How can it be my queen, my sovereign? Then the reply came: You can because you will: Therefore will first. The Voice then ceased. Alone, alone I walked for a few meters. I had passed two or three trees. Then stopped I and on high I saw a nightingale begin to sing: Her plume reflected the moonlight And dark her silhouette rose against the bough That bore her. Like as when water gushes out Of the clean rock into increasing streams And these uniting down the hillside run Into one stream, one current solely joined And dawn and morn and day and dusk and night Will the coursing stream full find and leave So sang the nightingale: her numbers flowed Like to a current ever-flowing full. And her emotions her heart emptied full: Into the night, the air of night The air of the still night - she sang and sang. And in her song my heart’s blood turned And in her song a little light lit up Into a nook in my brain: still she sang Into the bosky moonlight when the stars Twinkled from heaven’s realm to our earth And silver shadows gilded the still fields With passing clouds like robbers of the night. The leaves and boughs responded rustling still. And my mind lit, my heart’s blood riot turned And in that revolution random I Within my heart felt rising like a cloud My song-like a mist transparent rose she When the dawn full rubbing her fairy eyes With naked soles treads over the grassy dews And smiles her breath into the waking green. And I saw the lone stars, the welcome stars Were near me and I all giant-like seemed To be an equal in the size and light Below the azure vault of heaven moved And energy hummed like a taut wire. And I-and I, could my hands stretch And touch the stars and see my hand descant The shadows grey as over its face it passed And cloudless shone the stars that night. And of the stars at will a fair one chose I And touched it with my hand and made it mine That I could carry it to my sovereign queen And sang I in that night like to the nightingale Whose numbers flowed Like to a current ever-flowing full And her emotions her heart emptied full Into the night, the air of night. And from below in olive greenery hid A Voice bespake trembling and full: My son, you have now touched the skies Now that your heart is full Full as the heart of nightingale: And you have touched the stars and chose the stars Because you heart was full Because your song was full with all your heart. Continue in this way, my Son And sing for months and years to come That you Amidst the silent stars Will with them lie for times and times’ So spoke the Voice; so ended she. And in the Night, the air of Night The Voice went all away; so faded she.