Dawns of the world, how I have known you all,

so many, and so varied, and the same!

dawns o’er the timid plains, or in the folds

of the arm’d hills, or by the unsleeping shore;

a chill touch on the chill flesh of the dark

that, shuddering, shrinks from its couch, and leaves

a homeless light, staring, disconsolate,

on the drear world it knows too well, the world

it fled and finds again, its wistful hope

unmet by any miracle of night,

that mocks it rather, with its shreds that hang

about the woods and huddled bulks of gloom

that crouch, malicious, in the broken combes,

witness to foulnesses else unreveal’d

that visit earth and violate her dreams

in the lone hours when only evil wakes.