Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EVENING SONG OF MAIDENS, by HENRY HART MILMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EVENING SONG OF MAIDENS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come away, with willing feet
Last Line: Youth and maiden, come away.


COME away, with willing feet
Quit the close and breathless street:
Sultry court and chamber leave,
Come and taste the balmy eve,
Where the grass is cool and green,
And the verdant laurels screen
All whose timid footsteps move
With the quickening stealth of love;
Where Orontes' waters hold
Mirrors to your locks of gold,
And the sacred Daphne weaves
Canopies of trembling leaves.

Come away, the heavens above
Just have light enough for love;
And the crystal Hesperus
Lights his dew-fed lamp for us.
Come, the wider shades are falling,
And the amorous birds are calling
Each his wandering mate to rest
In the close and downy nest;
And the snowy orange flowers,
And the creeping jasmine bowers,
From their swinging censers cast
Their richest odours, and their last.

Come, the busy day is o'er,
Flying spindle gleams no more;
Wait not till the twilight gloom
Darken o'er the embroider'd loom.
Leave the toilsome task undone,
Leave the golden web unspun.
Hark, along the humming air
Home the laden bees repair;
And the bright and dashing rill
From the side of every hill,
With a clearer, deeper sound,
Cools the freshening air around.

Come, for though our God the Sun
Now his fiery course hath run;
There the western waves among
Lingers not his glory long;
There the couch awaits him still,
Wrought by Jove-born Vulcan's skill
Of the thrice-refined gold,
With its wings that wide unfold,
O'er the surface of the deep
To waft the bright-hair'd god asleep
From the Hesperian islands blest,
From the rich and purple West,
To where the swarthy Indians lave
In the farthest Eastern wave.

There the Morn on tiptoe stands,
Holding in her rosy hands
All the amber-studded reins
Of the steeds with fiery manes,
For the sky-borne charioteer
To start upon his new career.
Come, for when his glories break
Every sleeping maid must wake.
Brief be then our stolen hour
In the fragrant Daphne's bower;
Brief our twilight dance must be
Underneath the cypress tree.
Come away, and make no stay,
Youth and maiden, come away.





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