The Eavesdropper
The Eavesdropper
Original Text
Bliss Carman, Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics (New York: C. L. Webster, 1893), pp. . B-11 7495 Fisher Library.
1In a still room at hush of dawn,
2 My Love and I lay side by side
3And heard the roaming forest wind
4 Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
5I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
6 Because the round day was so fair;
7While memories of reluctant night
8 Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
9Outside, a yellow maple tree,
10 Shifting upon the silvery blue
11With tiny multitudinous sound,
12 Rustled to let the sunlight through.
13The livelong day the elvish leaves
14 Danced with their shadows on the floor;
15And the lost children of the wind
16 Went straying homeward by our door.
17And all the swarthy afternoon
18 We watched the great deliberate sun
19Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
20 Counting his hilltops one by one.
21Then as the purple twilight came
22 And touched the vines along our eaves,
23Another Shadow stood without
24 And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.
25The silence fell on my Love's lips;
26 Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad
27With pondering some maze of dream,
28 Through all the splendid year was glad.
29Restless and vague as a gray wind
30 Her heart had grown, she knew not why.
31But hurrying to the open door,
32 Against the verge of western sky
33I saw retreating on the hills,
34 Looming and sinister and black,
35The stealthy figure swift and huge
36 Of One who strode and looked not back.
Publication Start Year
1893
Publication Notes
Published in Atlantic Monthly
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
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