Songs, Merry and Sad

Folk Song

     When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
             At evenfall
             And voices range
     Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,

     Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
             Like migrant doves,
             Wake and give wing
     To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.

     The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
             The ancient charms
             Of dew and dusk
     Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,

     And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
             On new men's lips,
             Some old song starts,
     Made of the music of millennial hearts,

     Whereto one listens as from long ago
             And learns to know
             That one day's tears
     And love and life are as a thousand years',

     And that some simple shepherd, singing of
             His pain and love,
             May haply find
     His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.