The last crusade and other poems Author:Alfred Hayes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LYRICAL POEMS Evening has lost her throne ; the rosy smile Fades from her disenchanted realms ; Now darker shadows lengthen from the file Of lofty-drea... more »ming elms; The fields lie silent, waiting for the love Of yonder moon, who lingers pale, Like a young bride behind her scarce-seen veil, Faint with sweet eagerness, yet shy To leave the bosom of her mother-grove And bare her brightness to the lonely sky. Awake, awake !—The breezes shout Good morrow to the bustling rills; The birds are up, the sun is out, Wafting light kisses to the hills; The sunbeams, radiant with delight, Chase the quick swallows as they fly; The white clouds, giddy with their height, Are reeling from the open sky. 0 pure, pure Loveliness, that smiled So brightly on the world's first Spring, Older than sorrow, yet a child, That taught each careless bird to sing, That tinted the wild rose and tied His rainbow-necklace round the dove, My playmate, mistress and my bride, The Earth holds naught to match thy love !A WELSH HOMESTEAD. Nestled in loveliness, where four deep glens Blend their low voices in one harmony, One ever-restful, ever-restless song, Lulling the soul with vague monotony, Stirring it with a thousand undernotes That swell and sink and nevermore return. Muffled in woods, whose Winter nakedness Is fair as their Spring raiment, where the foot Falls soft as silence, and the meanest crag Is rich with clinging beauty, while the life Of butterfly and floweret lies asleep. A warm home, bosomed in the inmost folds Of Nature's robe ; an islet in the main Of cold gray rock, loud torrent, sodden moor, And lonely lakes, deep as the sullen steeps That wall them round, dark as the eyes of Fate. A treasure-house, where forms most delicate Find shelter ...« less