The Evening is the Morning [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

The Evening is the Morning

To make my love more delicate
I say into her eyes
The evening is the morning, dear,
but in a sweet disguise.
The morning was too loud with light
and the many birds would sing —
Who but the thoughtless would exchange
The Autumn for the Spring?

To make my love more beautiful
I sing into her ear
’Tis not the morning that I love,
it is the evening, dear:
No sweets of all the sweets we knew
are sweet as those we know,
And tho’ she sighs most heavily
she says ’tis even so.

To make my love think happily
I say the morning wine
Did much disturb thy maiden’s heart
and put a storm in mine:
The sunlight did so play with us
what strength or sight had we?
And tho’ her tears will come, she says
I speak most faithfully.

I say to make my sweetheart laugh
now all our work is done,
The evening is the morning, dear,
we shall deceive the sun!
Her hair that once was summer heat
is but a bloom in gray,
Still she will tell me Evening is
the Morning that I say.

Source:
John Shaw Neilson (editor: R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934 [May 1949 reprint], pages 98-99