The day was almost over; on the hills
The parting light was flitting like a ghost,
And like a trembling lover eve's sweet star,
In the dim leafy reach of the thick woods,
Stood gazing in the blue eyes of the night.
But not the beauty of the place nor hour
Moved my wild heart with tempests of such bliss
As shake the bosom of a god, new-winged,
When first in his blue pathway up the skies
He feels the embrace of immortality.
A little moment, and the world was changed--
Truth, like a planet striking through the dark,
Shone cold and clear, and I was what I am,
Listening along the wilderness of life
For faint echoes of lost melody.
The moonlight gather'd itself back from me
And slanted its pale pinions to the dust.
The drowsy gust, bedded in luscious blooms,
Startled, as 'twere at the death-throes of peace,
Down through the darkness moaningly fled off.
O mournful Past! how thou dost cling and cling--
Like a forsaken maiden to false hope--
To the tired bosom of the living hour,
Which, from thy weak embrace, the future time
Jocundly beckons with a roseate hand.
And, round about me honeyed memories drift
From the fair eminences of young hope,
Like flowers blown down the hills of Paradise,
By some soft wave of golden harmony,
Until the glorious smile of summers gone