When Milking-Time Is Done

When milking-time is done, and over all
This quiet Canadian inland forest home
And wide rough pasture-lots the shadows come,
And dews, with peace and twilight voices, fall,
From moss-cooled watering-trough to foddered stall
The tired plough-horses turn,—the barnyard loam
Soft to their feet,—and in the sky’s pale dome
Like resonant chords the swooping night-jars call.
The frogs, cool-fluting ministers of dream,
Make shrill the slow brook’s borders; pasture bars
Down clatter, and the cattle wander through,—
Vague shapes amid the thickets; gleam by gleam
Above the wet grey wilds emerge the stars,
And through the dusk the farmstead fades from view.