Counting the Stars

The cuckoo bird has long been dumb

And owls instead and flitting jars

Call out, call out for us to come,

My Love and me, to count the stars;

And into this wide orchard rove —

The whispering trees scarce give us room

That drop their petals on my Love

And me beneath the apple bloom

And each pale petal is alive

With dew of twilight from the sky,

Where all the stars hang in their hive.

That we've to count, my Love and I.

The boughs below, the boughs above,

They scatter, lest their twisted gloom

Should stay the counting of my Love

And me beneath the apple bloom.

And when the Mother Moon comes by

And puts the little stars to bed.

We count, my timid Love and I,

The pretty apple stars instead;

Until at last all lights remove,

And dark sleep dropping on the combe,

Fastens the eyelids of my Love

And me beneath the apple bloom.