Begun in November, when many things together ended and began.

I sit, aloft, in solitude,
Thinking many a quiet thing,
And neither verse nor melody
Can now beguile my heart to sing.
I see, o'er the horizon haze
Just where the sky with earth entwines,
The Sun take its leave with the Day;
But blessing us as it declines,
With gentle light it melts and crests
The clouds it nestles; more sublime,
It washes each sad, grey surface
With its rich shadow-gilt and shine.
Along the vista, silver-grey,
A riverbed of thought unwinds
Where peaceful students make their way,
Create a current of a kind.
Each one swept up in sunny dreams
That anchor them through surge and thrust,
They together form confluxing streams
Towards the guerdons gained by trust.

I wonder if, to heaven above,
I paint a picture of repose;
If angels watch and muse o'er me
As I regard the folk below.
Contentedly I seemed to sink
Into the gold-hued study nook
And purposeful I wrote my way
At first through my prosaic book.
But now my skin is stained in the
Same red that warms the building faces;
An hour now, and all the words
I've written are these pensive traces.
An hour past since I have seen
My little sun-star laugh his way
Away to dusk, away from me,
To gladden someone else's day.
And like the shadow creeping lowly
O'er the books and windowsills
An unvoiced longing steals slowly
through my heart, and my thoughts fills.

I wonder what celestial court
Parcels joy by God's decree.
I wonder if one's lot can thwart
one other's, when we choose freely.
I wonder what unyielding thread,
Heaven-blessed, can bind a soul
Unto another; what unsaid
unthought-of rule defines our dole.
I wonder if one's birth can blind
A person to a better part.
I wonder down what path we find
The birthrights of a patient heart.

Beyond the blushing broad frontier
The sun subsides in violet blaze.
My soul, in sudden heartsickness,
Gasps, grasps at its departing rays .
For though I love the eventide
And crave my quiet hours alone,
I can never say,
At the end of the day,
That it was for me that my sun shone.

I sit, aloft, in solitude,
Thinking many a quiet thing,
And neither verse nor melody
Can now beguile my heart to sing.