When you, my Dear, are away, away,
          How wearily goes the creeping day.
          A year drags after morning, and night
          Starts another year of candle light.
          O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon!
          Grant me, I beg of you, this boon.

          Whirl round the earth as never sun
          Has his diurnal journey run.
          And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air
          In a single flash, while your streaming hair
          Catches the stars and pulls them down
          To shine on some slumbering Chinese town.
          O Kindly Sun!  Understanding Moon!
          Bring evening to crowd the footsteps of noon.

          But when that long awaited day
          Hangs ripe in the heavens, your voyaging stay.
          Be morning, O Sun! with the lark in song,
          Be afternoon for ages long.
          And, Moon, let you and your lesser lights
          Watch over a century of nights.

          I own a solace shut within my heart,
           A garden full of many a quaint delight
           And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,
          Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
              Shining things
              With powdered wings.

          Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close
           The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind
           Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,
          Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,
              With content
              Grown indolent.

          By night my garden is o'erhung with gems
           Fixed in an onyx setting.  Fireflies
           Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.
          In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems
              Of hollyhocks
              Against the rocks.

          So far and still it is that, listening,
           I hear the flowers talking in the dawn;
           And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn,
          Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening,
              The sudden swish
              Of a