Explore "One Night" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Was it last summer, or ages gone, / That damp, dark night in the August dusk, / When I waited for you by the gate alone? / And the air was heavy with scents like musk. / Swiftly and silently shooting down / Like the lonesome light of a falling star, / I saw through the shadows dense and brown, / The dull red light of your fine cigar.
Like a king who taketh his own, you came / Through the lowering night and the falling dew. / Like one who yields to a rightful claim, / I waited there in the dusk for you. / Never again when the day grows late, / Never again in the years to be, / Shall I stand in the dark and dew, and wait, / And never again will you come to me.
But always and ever when high and far / The old moon hideth her troubled face, / I think how the light like a falling star / Lit all my world with a new strange grace. / The passionate glow of your splendid eyes / Shines into my heart as it shone that night, / And its slumberous billows surge and rise / As the ocean is stirred by the tempest's might.