The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

Earth’s Complines
By Charles G. D. Roberts
Before the feet of the dew
There came a call I knew,
Luring me into the garden
Where the tall white lilies grew.

I stood in the dusk between
The companies of green,
O’er whose aerial ranks
The lilies rose serene.

And the breathing air was stirred
By an unremembered word,
Soft, incommunicable—
And wings not of a bird.

I heard the spent blooms sighing,
The expectant buds replying ;
I felt the life of the leaves,
Ephemeral, yet undying.