I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour,

Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man.

The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower,

The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan

As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran,

Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power,

Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan.

[Pg 128]

The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades

The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep.

Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades,

The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep

Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep

Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades

Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.

The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast;

It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day.

And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast,

Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway.

But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away,

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