Quatrains

William Hamilton Hayne (1856–1929)

MOONLIGHT SONG OF THE MOCKING-BIRD

EACH golden note of music greets

The listening leaves, divinely stirred,

As if the vanished soul of Keats

Had found its new birth in a bird.

NIGHT MISTS

SOMETIMES, when Nature falls asleep,

Around her woods and streams

The mists of night serenely creep—

For they are Nature’s dreams.

AN AUTUMN BREEZE

THIS gentle and half melancholy breeze

Is but a wandering Hamlet of the trees,

Who finds a tongue in every lingering leaf

To voice some subtlety of sylvan grief.