_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.