When the Summer moonlight evening, weird, fantastic shades creating,
Wrapped within her sombre mantle, treads the sunset's slanting bars,
An unrivaled nightly singer in some unseen crevice waiting
Times his slumbrous twilight sonnet to the twinkling of the stars.
Hushed is now the plumaged songster, finished is his rich outpouring,
While the honey-bee in silence seeks his darkened royal cell;
The grasshopper no longer chirps from Nature's grassy flooring,
But one tireless voice undaunted chants no Summer-night farewell.
Not the royal moth's low whirring, or the breeze's whispered story
makes the stilly air seem teeming with the same repeated note;
Not the cry so weird and stirring of the night-owl, old and hoary,
Is the serenade that nightly through my window loves to float.
Floating through my open window in its wiry, humdrum meter,
While the stars so slyly twinkling time his nightly serenade;
Many a song is much more thrilling--many another surely sweeter,
But a truer perseverance has no other bard displayed.
