“To One Leaving for Sweden”

 

When soft and deep in Sweden’s skies
        Moons burn like golden fire,
And the nightingale thrills all the wood
        With exquisite desire,
Turn, turn upon thy pillow then,
        And think how dark and still
The firs wait for the rising moon
        On lonely Sehome hill.
 
Turn from thy song-bird’s ravishment—
        And think how mournfully
The night-hawk blows its lonely note
        By Puget’s lonely sea.

“To One Leaving for Sweden” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).
A draft of “To One Leaving for Sweden,” courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington.