Buy Love, buy faith, buy snow-white truth? Buy moonlight, sunlight, present, past? Buy but one brimful cup of youth That calm souls drink of to the last? O God! 'tis pitiful to see This miser so forlorn and old! O God! how poor a man may be With nothing in this world but gold! VIII. The broad magnolia's blooms are white; Her blooms are large, as if the moon Had lost her way some lazy night, And lodged here till the afternoon. Oh, vast white blossoms breathing love! White bosom of my lady dead, In your white heaven overhead I look, and learn to look above. IX. All night the tall magnolia kept Kind watch above the nameless tomb: Two shapes kept waiting in the gloom And gray of morn, where roses wept. The dew-wet roses wept; their eyes All dew, their breath as sweet as prayer. And as they wept, the dead down there Did feel their tears and hear their sighs. The grass uprose as if afraid Some stranger foot might press too near; Its every blade was like a spear, Its every spear a living blade. The grass above that nameless tomb Stood all arrayed, as if afraid Some weary pilgrim seeking room And rest, might lay where she was laid. X. 'Twas morn, and yet it was not morn; 'Twas morn in heaven, not on earth,-- A star was singing of a birth, Just saying that a day was born. The marsh hard by that bound the lake,-- The great low sea-lake, Ponchartrain, Shut off from sultry Cuban main,-- Drew up its legs, as half awake: Drew long stork legs, long legs that steep In slime where alligators creep,-- Drew long green legs that stir the grass, As when the late lorn night-winds pass. Then from the marsh came croakings low, Then louder croaked some sea-marsh beast; Then, far away against the east, God's rose of morn began to grow. From out the marsh, against that east, A ghostly moss-swept cypress stood; With ragged arms above the wood It rose, a God-forsaken beast. It seemed so frightened where it rose! The moss-hung thing it seemed to wave The worn-out garments of the grave,-- To wave and wave its old grave-clothes. Close by, a cow rose up and lowed From out a palm-thatched milking-shed. A black boy on the river road Fled sudden, as the night had fled: A nude black boy, a bit of night That had been broken off and lost From flying night, the time it crossed The surging river in its flight: A bit of darkness, following The sable night on sable wing,-- A bit of darkness stilled with fear, Because that nameless tomb was near. Then holy bells came pealing out; Then steamboats blew, then horses neighed; Then smoke from hamlets round about Crept out, as if no more afraid. Then shrill cocks here, and shrill cocks there, Stretched glossy necks and filled the air. How many cocks it takes to make A country morning well awake!