Dawn

All men are lonely now. / This is the hour when no man has a friend. / Memory and Faith suspend / From their spread wings above a cool abyss. / All friendships end. // He that lay awake / All night / For sweet love’s unregenerate sake, / Sleeps in the grey light. // The lover, if he dream at all, / Dreams not of her whose languid hand sleeps open at his side; / He is gone to another bride. / And she he leaves behind / Sighs not in sleep “Unkind ... unkind ...”; / She walks in a garden of yellow quinces; / Smiling, she gathers yellow quinces in a basket / Of willow and laurel combined. // Should I return to your door, / Fresh and haggard out of the morning air, / There would be darkness on the stair, / And a dead close odor painfully sad, / That was not there before. / There would be silence. There would be heavy steps across the floor. / And you would let me in, frowning with sleep / Under your rumpled hair. // Beautiful now upon the ear unshut by slumber / The rich and varied voices of the waking day!— / The mighty, mournful whistles without number / Of tugs and ferries, mingling, confounding, failing, / Thinning to separate notes of wailing, / Making stupendous music on the misty bay. // Now through the echoing street in the growing light, / Intent on errands that the sun approves, / Clatter unashamed the heavy wheels and hooves / Before the silent houses; briskly they say: / “Marshal not me among the enterprises of the night / I am the beginning of the day.”