One by one the flowers close,

Lily and dewy rose

Shutting their tender petals from the moon:
The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon
Are still the noisy crows.

The dormouse squats and eats

Choice little dainty bits

Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;
Nibbling his fill, he stops from time to time
And listens where he sits.

From far the lowings come

Of cattle driven home:

From farther still the wind brings fitfully
The vast continual murmur of the sea,
Now loud, now almost dumb.

The gnats whirl in the air,

The evening gnats, and there

The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail

For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail

Comes forth clammy and bare.

Hark! that's the nightingale,

Telling the self-same tale

Her song told when this ancient earth was young; So echoes answered when her song was sung

In the first wooded vale.

We call it love and pain

The passion of her strain;

And yet we little understand or know:
Why should it not be rather joy that so
Throbs in each throbbing vein ?

In separate herds the deer

Lie; here the bucks, and here.

The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:
Through all the hours of night until the dawn
They sleep, forgetting fear.

The hare sleeps where it lies

With wary half-closed eyes;

The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck :
Only the fox is out, some heedless duck

Remote, each single star

Comes out, till there they are

All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp!
While close at hand the glowworm lights her lamp

Or twinkles from afar.

But evening now is done.

As much as if the sun

Day-giving had arisen in the east:

For night has come, and the great calm has ceased,

The quiet sands have run.

Christina Rossetti.

A SUMMER EVE.

Down the sultry are of day

The burning wheels have urged their way,
And Eve along the western skies,

Spreads her intermingling dyes,

Down the deep, the miry lane,
Creeking comes the empty wain,
And driver on the shaft-horse sits,
Whistling now and then by fits;
And oft with his accustom'd call,
Urging on the sluggish Ball.

The barn is still, the master's gone,
And thresher puts his jacket on,
While Dick, upon the ladder tall,
Nails the dead kite to the wall.
Here comes shepherd Jack at last,
He has penn'd the sheep-cote fast,
For 'twas but two nights before
A lamb was eaten on the moor:
His empty wallet Rover carries,

Now for Jack, when near home, tarries;
With lolling tongue he runs to try,

If the horse-trough be not dry.

The milk is settled in the pans,

And supper messes in the cans;
In the hovel carts are wheel'd,
And both the colts are drove a-field;
The horses are all bedded up,
And the ewe is with the tup,

The snare for Mister Fox is set,
The leaven laid, the thatching wet,
And Bess has slinked away to talk
With Roger in the holly-walk.

Now on the settle all, but Bess,
Are set to eat their supper mess:
And little Tom and roguish Kate
Are swinging on the meadow gate.
Now they chat of various things,
Of taxes, ministers, and kings,
Or else tell all the village news,
How madam did the squire refuse;