[Editor: This poem was published in Hermes: The Magazine of the University of Sydney (Sydney, NSW), 20 November 1894.]
Twilight.
The neatherd gently drives his kine
Across the grassy sward;
The Sun now finished his decline,
The heavens glow with light divine
And shed a parting gleam benign
To light him o’er the sward.
When eventide shall and my day,
And round me close the shades,
When sunlight gleams have passed away,
Lest in the darkling gloom I stray,
May heaven shed a kindly ray
To light we through the shades.
“PEM.”
Source:
Hermes: The Magazine of the University of Sydney (Sydney, NSW), vol. 10 no. 6, 20 November 1894, p. 4
Editor’s notes:
kine = cattle
neatherd = (archaic) a cowherd, herdsman, someone who herds cattle or oxen; someone who looks after neat (“neat”, “neet”, and “nete”, from Middle English, refer to animal, beast, ox, bull, or cow, especially referring to black cattle; also, cattle or oxen, in a plural sense)
See: See: Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language”, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882, p. 389
o’er = (archaic) over (pronounced the same as “oar”, “or”, and “ore”)
shade = ghost, phantom; disembodied spirit
sward = a lawn or meadow; land covered with grass
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