Songs of the Common Day, and Ave!

An Ode for the Shelley Centenary

by Charles G.D. Roberts

 

WHEN MILKING-TIME IS DONE

 
WHEN milking-time is done, and over all
     This quiet Canadian inland forest home
     And wide rough pasture-lots the shadows come,
And dews, with peace and twilight voices, fall,
From moss-cooled watering-trough to foddered stall
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     The tired plough-horses turn,—the barnyard loam
     Soft to their feet,—and in the sky's pale dome
Like resonant chords the swooping night-jars call.

The frogs, cool-fluting ministers of dream,
     Make shrill the slow brook's borders; pasture bars
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     Down clatter, and the cattle wander through,—
Vague shapes amid the thickets; gleam by gleam
     Above the wet grey wilds emerge the stars,
     And through the dusk the farmstead fades from view.