Chapter XXX

"Sun-lit Hours," "Hours of Afternoon,"
Hours superbly now a part of us!
Your measured pace lights up our garden paths,
Our golden roses kiss you as in pain;
Summer's dying; autumn comes now soon.

Hours of fragrant flowering, will you come again?

And yet if Fate, that holds the stars in leash,
Spare us its evil and its bitter chance,
Perhaps you shall weave some day before my eyes
The measured footfalls of your radiant dance;
And I shall add then to your ardent showers
Of shade and sunlight on the grassy slope
--Like a supreme, immense and sovereign hope--
The steps and farewells of my "Twilight Hours."