Days End by David Morton

Days End
by David Morton

Is there no different way the light may learn
To leave these hills at every evening’s close
Save turning as a lovely ghost would turn
To leave a house and hearthstone that she knows
In such a wise that these same stars appear
One after one, to gaze across the dark
On rooms abandoned to the windy year
That keep no single sweet familiar mark?

I have seen all too much of lonely things,
Of lovely slow departures in this wise,
And the long, listening stillness that it brings
Where lonely hills are left to lonely skies,
And stars incredulous that stare and stare
Into the empty hush that gathers there.


I found this poem hand written in an old dtexbook my father owned when he was attending
UCLA around 1928. It was a business textbook! The poem must have meant something to him
for hum to take the trouble to write it out at the front of his book. It is a sad wistful expression of loneliness. The lonely college student.