George Henry Boker (1823–1890)

ALL day I heard a humming in my ears,

A buzz of many voices, and a throng

Of swarming numbers, passing with a song

Measured and stately as the rolling spheres’.

I saw the sudden light of lifted spears,

Slanted at once against some monster wrong;

And then a fluttering scarf which might belong

To some sweet maiden in her morn of years.

I felt the chilling damp of sunless glades,

Horrid with gloom; anon, the breath of May

Was blown around me, and the lulling play

Of dripping fountains. Yet the lights and shades,

The waving scarfs, the battle’s grand parades

Seemed but vague shadows of that wondrous lay.