Did the vain garments melt in music from your side? 
Did you rise from them as a lily flowers i’ the air? 
—­But you were there before me like the Night’s own bride—­
I dared not call you mine.  So still and tall you were,
I never dreamed that you were mine—­I never dreamed
I loved you—­I forgot I loved you.  You were air
And music, and the shadows that you stood in, seemed
Like priests that keep their sombre vigil round a shrine—­
Like sombre priests that watch about a glorious shrine.

And then you stepped into the moonlight and laid bare
The wonder of your body to the night, and stood
With all the stars of heaven looking at you there,
As simply as a saint might bare her soul to God—­
As simply as a saint might bathe in lakes of prayer—­
Stood with the holy moonlight falling on you there
Until I thought that in a glory unaware
I had seen a soul stand forth and bare itself to God—­
A saintly soul lay bare its innocence to God.

JUNE NIGHT IN WASHINGTON.

The scent of honeysuckle,
Drugging the twilight
With its sweet opiate of lovers’ dreams! 
The last red glow of the setting sun
On the red brick wall
Of the neighboring house,
And the scramble of red roses over it!

Slowly, slowly
The night smokes up from the city to the stars,
The faint foreshadowed stars;
The smouldering night
Breathes upward like the breath
Of a woman asleep
With dim breast rising and falling
And a smile of delicate dreams.

Softly, softly
The wind comes into the garden,
Like a lover that fears lest he waken his love,
And his hands drip with the scent of the roses
And his locks weep with the opiate odor of honeysuckle. 
Sighing, sighing
As a lover that yearns for the lips of his love,
In a torment of bliss,
In a passionate dreaming of bliss,
The wind in the trees of the garden!

How intimate are the trees,—­
Rustling like the secret darkness of the soul! 
How still is the starlight,—­
Aloof in the placidity of dream!

Outside the garden
A group of negroes passing in the street
Sing with ripe lush voices,
Sing with voices that swim
Like great slow gliding fishes
Through the scent of the honeysuckle: 

My love’s waitin’,
Waitin’ by the river,
Waitin’ till I come along! 
Wait there, child; I’m comin’.

Jay-bird tol’ me,
Tol’ me in the mornin’,
Tol’ me she’d be there to-night. 
Wait there, child; I’m comin’._

Waves of dream! 
Spell of the summer night! 
Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! 
Desire of the honeysuckle! 
And further away,
Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night,
The negroes, singing: 

Whip-po’-will tol’ me,
Tol’ me in the evenin’,
“Down by the bend where the cat-tails grow.” 
Wait there, child; I’m comin’.