D. F. Chambers

For Sleep

Taken from the book Interlude.

The moon that swam within my little pond

Is shattered shards of silver, and the stars

That seek to hold the wavelets in their bond

Are little, dancing, broken, silver bars.

The soft-foot night has caught me unawares,

Bringing a wind that wakes the quiet shade

As sweetly scented as the heart of flowers

Dew-drenched, moth-haunted in some silent glade.

The singing dark is lulling me to sleep

And fairer than the thoughts of day my dream.

The mended moon is swimming in the deep

Star-studded waters of the quiet stream,

An errant bee still seeks the sleeping flowers:

And magic night forgets day's longing hours.

Lost Flowers

Taken from the book Interlude.

Deep in the woodland are flowers that linger

Long, though the summer has faded and fled

And autumn is yielding her russet to winter,

Whose frost-finger ravish each blossoming bed.

And in the sound of the west wind awakening,

Herald of winter, as faint as a dream

Are whispers of summer, of bird song and breezes,

The rustling of reeds and the lilt of the stream.

Tall trees that bent to the breath of the summer,

Mourning, are bowed in a quickening fear

Of storm, and the sunset is shrouded in cloud-wrack.

Though redder leaves carpet the grave of the year

That dies with the darkness e'er moonrise and morning

With summer songs stilled before desolate day,

That dies with the flowers that winter has stolen

And all the fair fabric is vanished away.