When voices sink in twilight silences,
Like swimmers in a sea of quietude,
And faint farewells re-echo from the hill;
When the last thrush his sleepy vesper says,
And the lost threnody of the whip-poor-will
Gropes through the gathering shadows in the wood;

Then in the paths where dusk fades into grey,
And sighing shapes stir that I never see,
I follow still a quest of old despair
To find at last,--ah, but I cannot say,
Except that I have known a face somewhere,
And loved in times beyond all memory.

O soulless face! white flash in solitude,
Forgotten phantom of a moonless night,
Shall I kiss thy sad mouth once again, or wait
Drowned beneath fathoms of a tideless mood
Until the stars flee through the western gate
Driven in shivering fear before the light?

Cambridge