Lines Composed at Headington Hill, Oxford

[From: "The Last Journal of Gwyllyn"]

Voices are on the autumn breeze
sifting through the dying leaves
with the sound of distant seas:
“O come with us! O come!

“The light is slanting from the west;

fly to where all things are best –
a dwelling-place of peace and rest.
O come with us! O come!

“Life has reached its endmost stage,
years have bloomed with fullest age,
the reader turns the final page –
O come with us! O come!

“O come with us, the day is ending;
the lights of Sun and Moon are blending;
the wind is strong, the trees are bending –
O come with us! O come!

“We fly away, beyond the sky
to where the Light will never die;
whisper at last a soft ‘good-bye’
O come with us! O come!”

I come with you, I come with you!
I come with you, I come!

Overnight in Coeur d'Alene

The sky is broken; a jeweled night spills out.
The watchful crows departed like shadows
to pursue the dying-coal of daylight
far into the darkening forest-deeps.
Dry wood burns best and brightest,
with less smoke. Our lives are leaves,
poised and pierced by firelight,
shifting and shivering in the wind,
in the sharp unfocus of the season
disturbed by blustery weather.
We sleep in the open air; dreams come strong,
fragrant with cedar and damp earth:
dreams of owls and powdered moths,
of crickets and distant singing-frogs
all along the slumbering river.
The wind is dark in the tallest trees;
the morning will find us here.