Night Fell by Florence Ripley Mastin

March 8, 2015   Night Fell   Florence Ripley Mastin

Night fell one year ago, like this. He had been writing steadily. Among these dusky walls of books, How bright he looked, intense as flame! Suddenly he paused, The firelight in his hair, And said, “The time has come to go.” I took his hand; We watched the logs burn out; The apple boughs fingered the window; Down the cool, spring night A slim, white moon leaned to the hill. To-night the trees are budded white, And the same pale moon slips through the dusk. O little buds, tap-tapping on the pane, O white moon, I wonder if he sleeps in woods Where there are leaves? Or if he lies in some black trench, His hands, his kind hands, kindling flame that kills? Or if, or if … He is here now, to bid me last good-night?            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   “Night Fell” was published in Mastin’s book Green Leaves (J. T. White & Co, 1918).   Florence Ripley Mastin was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in 1886. She published several books of poetry, including Cables of Cobweb (1935) and Over the Tappen Zee (1962). Mastin died in 1968. Poetry by Mastin   Green Leaves (Kessinger Publishing, 2008) "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost "At Night" by Yone Noguchi "Summer Night, Riverside" by Sara Teasdale Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.