Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/427

I hear the swift-winged partridge pass. With whir and boom of gusty flight, Across the broad heath s treeless height: Or, just where, elbow-poised, I lift Above the wild flower s careless drift My half-closed eyes, I see and hear The blithe field sparrow twittering clear Quick ditties to his tiny love; While, from afar, the timid dove, With faint, voluptuous murmur, wakes The silence of the pastoral brakes. I love midsummer sunsets, rolled Down the rich west in waves of gold, With blazing crests of billowy fire. But when those crimson floods retire, In noiseless ebb, slow r -surging, grand, By pensive twilight s flickering strand, In gentler mood I love to mark The slow gradations of the dark; Till, lo! from Orient s mists withdrawn, Hail! to the moon s resplendent dawn; On dusky vale and haunted plain Her effluence falls like balmy rain; Gaunt gulfs of shadow own her might; She bathes the rescued world in light, So that, albeit my summer s day Erewhile did breathe its life away, Methinks, whate er its hours had won Of beauty, born from shade and sun, Hath not perchance so wholly died, But o er the moonlight s silver)- tide Comes back, sublimed and purified 1