| A VOICE peals in this end of night | |
| A phrase of notes resembling stars, | |
| Single and spiritual notes of light. | |
| What call they at my window-bars? | |
| The South, the past, the day to be, | 5 |
| An ancient infelicity. | |
| |
| Darkling, deliberate, what sings | |
| This wonderful one, alone, at peace? | |
| What wilder things than song, what things | |
| Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, | 10 |
| Dearer than Italy, untold | |
| Delight, and freshness centuries old? | |
| |
| And first first-loves, a multitude, | |
| The exaltation of their pain; | |
| Ancestral childhood long renewed; | 15 |
| And midnights of invisible rain; | |
| And gardens, gardens, night and day, | |
| Gardens and childhood all the way. | |
| |
| What Middle Ages passionate, | |
| O passionless voice! What distant bells | 20 |
| Lodged in the hills, what palace state | |
| Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells, | |
| Without desire, without dismay, | |
| Some morrow and some yesterday. | |
| |
| All-natural things! But more—Whence came | 25 |
| This yet remoter mystery? | |
| How do these starry notes proclaim | |
| A graver still divinity? | |
| This hope, this sanctity of fear? | |
| O innocent throat! O human ear! | 30 |
