THE EAVESDROPPER
by: Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
- N a still
room at hush of dawn,
- My Love and I lay side by side
- And heard the roaming forest wind
- Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
-
- I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
- Because the round day was so fair;
- While memories of reluctant night
- Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
-
- Outside, a yellow maple tree,
- Shifting upon the silvery blue
- With tiny multitudinous sound,
- Rustled to let the sunlight through.
-
- The livelong day the elvish leaves
- Danced with their shadows on the floor;
- And the lost children of the wind
- Went straying homeward by our door.
-
- And all the swarthy afternoon
- We watched the great deliberate sun
- Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
- Counting his hilltops one by one.
-
- Then as the purple twilight came
- And touched the vines along our eaves,
- Another Shadow stood without
- And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.
-
- The silence fell on my Love's lips;
- Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad
- With pondering some maze of dream,
- Though all the splendid year was glad.
-
- Restless and vague as a gray wind
- Her heart had grown, -- she knew not why.
- But hurrying to the open door,
- Against the verge of western sky
-
- I saw retreating on the hills,
- Looming and sinister and black,
- The stealthy figure swift and huge
- Of One who strode and looked not back.
"The Eavesdropper" is
reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1893. |
MORE
POEMS BY BLISS CARMAN |
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