Robert Laurence Binyon - A Prelude At Evening lyrics

My spirit was like the lonely air Before night, Like hovering cloud that's melted there In the late light, When slow the vast earth--shadows reach To the last flush, And the wandering silences have each Their own hush. Did the green gra** about me glimmer, Or trees tower? Not softer to my sense, nor dimmer, The obscure power Of all the world's wide trouble, fought In the heart's recess: My heart was solitude, my thought Emptiness. But through my spirit that seemed, unfilled, Alone to float, A sudden dewy sweetness thrilled; A low note! And then a loud note, rippling full To a still pause: The liquid silence was a pool That a breeze flaws. It throbbed again, how lonely clear! A song that seemed Sprung beyond memory or fear, A voice dreamed In a land that no man ever found; And who knows What shook those lingering drops of sound At the rich close? Ah, where were you, pa**ion and grief Of the world's wrong? What had you to do with a trembling leaf And a bird's song, And spaces calm with coming of night, And the fresh gloom Of shadowy trees, and smelt delight Of hidden bloom? Yet O, in me that song had part Because of you! It drank of the very blood of the heart It quivered through Because of the tears of joy, and the cost Of a joy's breath, Measureless thoughts of a dearness lost, Hope, and d**h. Strangeness of longing, beauty, pain! I was aware Of all your secret, soft as rain, In the dim air. For Life it was that sang aloud To the lone dew, Brave in the night and sweet in the cloud: My heart knew.