Silent are all the sounds of day;
  Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
  O’er the poet’s house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
  To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass;
  And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
  And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
  And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight
  Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
  Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you.

Of the landscape lying so far below,
  With its towns and rivers and desert places;
And the splendor of light above, and the glow
  Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
  Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
  And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,
  Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
  And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,
  Though not by a sound was the silence broken;
The surest pledge of a deathless name
  Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

A DUTCH PICTURE

Simon Danz has come home again,
  From cruising about with his buccaneers;
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
  And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles,
  And weathercocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
  Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip-garden there by the town,
  Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown,
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
  Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain,
And the listed tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
  Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.

The windmills on the outermost
  Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whiskered sentinels at their post,
  Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin,
  He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,
And old seafaring men come in,
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
  And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and shine
  Of the flickering fire of the winter night;
Figures in color and design
Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
  Half darkness and half light.