Oh, pleasant eventide! Clouds on the western sideGrow grey and greyer hiding the warm sun:The bees and birds, their happy labours done, Seek their close nests and bide.
Screened in the leafy wood The stock-doves sit and brood:The very squirrel leaps from bough to boughBut lazily; pauses; and settles now Where once he stored his food.
One by one the flowers close, Lily and dewy roseShutting their tender petals from the moon:The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon Are still the noisy crows.
The dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bitsBeneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time And listens where he sits.
From far the lowings come Of cattle driven home:From farther still the wind brings fitfullyThe vast continual murmur of the sea, Now loud, now almost dumb.
The gnats whirl in the air, The evening gnats; and thereThe owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sailFor prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, clammy and bare.
Hark! that's the nightingale, Telling the selfsame taleHer song told when this ancient earth was young:So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale.
We call it love and pain The passion of her strain;And yet we little understand or know:Why should it not be rather joy that so Throbs in each throbbing vein?
In separate herds the deer Lie; here the bucks, and hereThe does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:Through all the hours of night until the dawn They sleep, forgetting fear.
The hare sleeps where it lies, With wary half-closed eyes;The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck:Only the fox is out, some heedless duck Or chicken to surprise.
Remote, each single star Comes out, till there they areAll shining brightly: how the dews fall damp!While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lamp Or twinkles from afar.
But evening now is done As much as if the sunDay-giving had arisen in the East:For night has come; and the great calm has ceased, The quiet sands have run.