WHEN autumn’s silence tranced the skies,
    And all life held its breath,
Unto Rosanna’s lips and eyes
    Came the white moth of death,—

That moth whose wings are feathered light,

    From out oblivion’s deep,
With magic pinions, petalled white,
    Of folded sleep on sleep,—

And fluttered dim and vague and grey,
    Above her lips and brow:

And other beauties gild life’s day
    With other glories now.

For earth’s hushed pallor of the morn,
    And love’s dim trance of night,
From out the realms of sleep, reborn,

    Fell on her soft and white,

With those pale dreams of eld which tame
    The tide of the heart’s wild will:
And all that mask of love became
    A mystery white and still.