Toward Evening / Margaret DeLaughter

Toward Evening

The poppies just outside my door
  Still flaunt their crimson loveliness.
How can they blossom any more,
  Now I have lost my happiness?

Not any grief of mine can mar    
  The beauty of this tranquil weather.
Each evening, with the first pale star,
  Comes that same thrush we loved together,

And pours gold notes from every bough
  Of his old sacred apple-tree.  
But he has lost his magic now —
  He cannot sing you back to me.

~~
Margaret DeLaughter
from Poetry, August 1921

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Margaret DeLaughter biography