Night in Buck Hollow

THE twilight and the chill, the closing flower,
Earth and the setting sun:
From these no flight, and so befell the hour
For rendezvous with silence and the fear
That, undefeated, leaves the heart undone.

Companionless, beneath the unanswering star,
In the blind, dreamlike wood,
He sought the late-deserted, smouldering fire,
And of his own dim past the avatar,
Touched by the cool night wind, alone he stood.

The hills drew closer, like a long-lost thought;
At last he knew:
The landscape was his origin and author.
Dumb forest, silent meadows, were inwrought
To be his soul, to form him, through and through.

And yet in him to be of earth set free,
A microcosmos in the lonely place
Where terrible oblivion lies in wait
To cancel destiny
And sink the fear-bound self without a trace.

He lay beside the embers, and the night
Lay with him, and the sod
Upheld him while he waited his release.
Here in the shadows he must find his light,
Out of his weakness he must claim his might,
He who feared darkness must play host to God.

So came the morning, and each rooted tree
Was symbol of the calm within his heart.
The cosmos came to nestle in his mind,
And he was free,
Less than the whole, and yet transcendent part.