Twilight Calm Christina Rossetti

        O pleasant eventide!
        Clouds on the western side
Grow gray and grayer, hiding the warm sun:
The bees and birds, their happy labors done,
        Seek their close nests and bide.

        Screened in the leafy wood
        The stock-doves sit and brood:
The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough
But lazily; pauses; and settles now
        Where once he stored his food.

        One by one the flowers close,
        Lily and dewy rose
Shutting their tender petals from the moon:
The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon
        Are still the noisy crows.

        The dormouse squats and eats
        Choice little dainty bits
Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;
Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time
        And listens where he sits.

        From far the lowings come
        Of cattle driven home:
From farther still the wind brings fitfully
The vast continual murmur of the sea,
        Now loud, now almost dumb.