Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

EXPECTATION.

  Roll on, O shining sun,
    To the far seas!
  Bring down, ye shades of eve,
    The soft, salt breeze!
  Shine out, O stars, and light
  My darling's pathway bright,
  As through the summer night
    She comes to me.

  No beam of any star
    Can match her eyes;
  Her smile the bursting day
    In light outvies.
  Her voice—the sweetest thing
  Heard by the raptured spring
  When waking wild-woods ring—
    She comes to me.

  Ye stars, more swiftly wheel
    O'er earth's still breast;
  More wildly plunge and reel
    In the dim west!
  The earth is lone and lorn,
  Till the glad day be born,
  Till with the happy morn
    She comes to me.