The Whippoorwill

I Above lone woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium red; And still, and still, Along old lanes the locusts sow With clustered pearls the Maytimes know, Deep in the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe Of 'whippoorwill!' of 'whippoorwill!' II Beneath the idle beechen boughs We heard the far bells of the cows Come slowly jangling towards the house; And still, and still, Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky; Beyond the evening-star's white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of 'whippoorwill,' of 'whippoorwill.' III And in the city oft, when swims The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs; And still, and still, I seem to hear, where shadows grope Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,- Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-sweetened slope,- Retreat, despairing, past all hope, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.