VESPERS by MARGARET ELIZABETH MUNSON SANGSTER

I LEAVE the city behind me,
Shaking its dust from my feet;
Leaving its thunder and roar of trade,
I haste to the covert sweet,
Where from the elm-boughs arching,
As in long cathedrals dim,
Through the hush of the lingering twilight
The thrushes sing a hymn.

In the town were hurry and bustle,
And squalor and sin were there,
And the trail of the worship of Mammon,
And the burden of strenuous care.
In the fields are silence and perfume,
And one may kneel and pray
In the calm and cloistered forest
At the tender fall of day.
The birds go flying homeward
To the nest in the tree-tops dim,
And the vespers die into stillness—
The thrush has finished his hymn.

Oh, beautiful lanes, I love you
As you skirt the babbling brooks,
As you seek the foot of the mountain,
As you find the hidden nooks,
Where the ferns in great green masses
The edge of the swamp-land rim,
Where I linger till stars awake above
And the thrushes sing their hymn.

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