This Even I Was Walking Solitaire Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

This even I was walking solitaire
Green, olive-green the trees incorporated
In to the growing darkness like impending thieves
Stood where I passed lined like sentinels
Or like the guards in silent parade stretched.
The water gurgled in the turning mill
A leaf falls to the ground all silently:
The rest is silence.
And from a distant tree I heard a voice
First indistinct then uttering syllables
Which I understood and not: then more
Distinct and understandable and nearer
The Voice grew.
I heard. It was the Muse. As from a sacred tree
She stood and spoke:
My loved Poet to-night I hest
That you pluck one of the night’s stars
And bring it to me here shining bright.
To which I answered:
How can it be my queen, my sovereign?
Then the reply came:
You can because you will:
Therefore will first.
The Voice then ceased.
Alone, alone I walked for a few meters.
I had passed two or three trees.
Then stopped I and on high
I saw a nightingale begin to sing:
Her plume reflected the moonlight
And dark her silhouette rose against the bough
That bore her. Like as when water gushes out
Of the clean rock into increasing streams
And these uniting down the hillside run
Into one stream, one current solely joined
And dawn and morn and day and dusk and night
Will the coursing stream full find and leave
So sang the nightingale: her numbers flowed
Like to a current ever-flowing full.
And her emotions her heart emptied full:
Into the night, the air of night
The air of the still night - she sang and sang.
And in her song my heart’s blood turned
And in her song a little light lit up
Into a nook in my brain: still she sang
Into the bosky moonlight when the stars
Twinkled from heaven’s realm to our earth
And silver shadows gilded the still fields
With passing clouds like robbers of the night.
The leaves and boughs responded rustling still.
And my mind lit, my heart’s blood riot turned
And in that revolution random I
Within my heart felt rising like a cloud
My song-like a mist transparent rose she
When the dawn full rubbing her fairy eyes
With naked soles treads over the grassy dews
And smiles her breath into the waking green.

And I saw the lone stars, the welcome stars
Were near me and I all giant-like seemed
To be an equal in the size and light
Below the azure vault of heaven moved
And energy hummed like a taut wire.

And I-and I, could my hands stretch
And touch the stars and see my hand descant
The shadows grey as over its face it passed
And cloudless shone the stars that night.
And of the stars at will a fair one chose I
And touched it with my hand and made it mine
That I could carry it to my sovereign queen
And sang I in that night like to the nightingale
Whose numbers flowed
Like to a current ever-flowing full
And her emotions her heart emptied full
Into the night, the air of night.

And from below in olive greenery hid
A Voice bespake trembling and full:
My son, you have now touched the skies
Now that your heart is full
Full as the heart of nightingale:
And you have touched the stars and chose the stars
Because you heart was full
Because your song was full with all your heart.
Continue in this way, my Son
And sing for months and years to come
That you
Amidst the silent stars
Will with them lie for times and times’
So spoke the Voice; so ended she.
And in the Night, the air of Night
The Voice went all away; so faded she.