Poems (Ripley)/An Autumn Twilight
AN AUTUMN TWILIGHT
I stood up on a hill in the soft twilight: The hour that daylight merges into night.— To southward, woods and hills stretched far and wide From side to side.
Soft tinted were the trees in bronze and gold And crimson; and tall evergreens towered bold Against the sky and gleamed out like a blur Of tinted fur.
To eastward towered a steep and verdant hill: From out its side there gushed a little rill Of diamond water, sparkling and cool, And formed a pool,—
Where on a slab of stone upon its brink, Low-kneeling, one might downward bend and drink A draught more sparkling than the rarest wine Wrought of the vine.
Above it bent a gnarled witch-hazel tree,So low the diamond pool one scarce could see, All hung with golden flowers and golden leaves, Like tinted sheaves.
Upon the hill there towered giant trees And richly tinted were their wealth of leaves.— And at its foot there wound a little brook Born in some nook
Far out among the hills, and there it wound: A little, silver ribbon 'long the ground; And both its banks as far as eye could see Were lavishly
And gaily strewn with purple asters wild—And white ones gleamed where the waning sunlight smiled; And clumps of shrub-like sumachs lent a scarlet glow.— While murmuring low
The little brook went sparkling on its way. And right above, and millions of miles away, In the purple sky, there hung the ascending moon— The round, pale moon—
And silvered all the little valley. In The west, the sky above the sinking rim Of the golden sun, was a cloud-like mass of flame,— Too fair to name.
And the city, (called along the Lakes the Gem) Blue waters bordering it like to a hem, Stretched out before me in the dim half-light Of the soft twilight.
And at my feet a soft, green aftermath Did thickly border all the gravelly path, That wound adown the hill to the sparkling brook In its silvered nook.
And thickly on the cool, green verdure lay That moisture sent from clouds at close of day, To scatter freshness and all life renew: Great pearls of dew.
Ah, grand, inspiring was the lovely scene. One of the loveliest I had ever seen! A majesty did all about it twine Wrought by a pen divine!