Now, through the dusk With muffled bell The Dustman comes The World to tell, Night's elfin lanterns Burn and gleam In the twilight, wonderful World of Dream. Hollow and dim Sleep's boat doth ride, Heavily still At the waterside. Patter, patter, The children come, Yawning and sleepy, Out of the gloom. Like droning bees In a garden green, Over the thwarts They clamber in. And lovely Sleep With long-drawn oar Turns away From the whispering shore. Over the water Like roses glide Her hundreds of passengers Packed inside, To where in her garden Tremble and gleam The harps and lamps Of the World of Dream. QUEEN DJENIRA When Queen Djenira slumbers through The sultry noon's repose, From out her dreams, as soft she lies, A faint thin music flows. Her lovely hands lie narrow and pale With gilded nails, her head Couched in its banded nets of gold Lies pillowed on her bed. The little Nubian boys who fan Her cheeks and tresses clear, Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful voices Seem afar to hear. They slide their eyes, and nodding, say, "Queen Djenira walks to-day The courts of the lord Pthamasar Where the sweet birds of Psuthys are." And those of earth about her porch Of shadow cool and grey Their sidelong beaks in silence lean, And silent flit away. [Illustration] NIGHTFALL [Illustration] The last light fails--that shallow pool of day! The coursers of the dark stamp down to drink, Arch their wild necks, lift their wild heads and neigh; Their drivers, gathering at the water-brink, With eyes ashine from out their clustering hair, Utter their hollow speech, or gaze afar, Rapt in irradiant reverie, to where Languishes, lost in light, the evening star. Come the wood-nymphs to dance within the glooms, Calling these charioteers with timbrels' din; Ashen with twilight the dark forest looms O'er the nocturnal beasts that prowl within "O glory of beauty which the world makes fair!" Pant they their serenading on the air. Sound the loud hooves, and all abroad the sky The lusty charioteers their stations take; Planet to planet do the sweet Loves fly, And in the zenith silver music wake. Cities of men, in blindness hidden low, Fume their faint flames to that arched firmament, But all the dwellers in the lonely know The unearthly are abroad, and weary and spent, With rush extinguished, to their dreaming go. And world and night and star-enclustered space The glory of beauty are in one enravished face. CUMBERLAND The old, old King of Cumberland Awoke with bristling beard-- Crouched listening in the darkness To a sound that he had heard.