Poems (Scudder)/The Moors at Nantucket

by Antoinette Quinby Scudder

THE MOORS AT NANTUCKET

FOR K.C.B.

That evening before we started
 From Sconset, the afterglow
Was like fiery-hearted opals
 That are brought from Mexico.

For the sea was of darkest cobalt
 From your friend's porch looking down,
Though it churned into molten garnet
 Where the red rock-mosses drown.

And the great hydrangeas growing
 On the windy cottage lawn
Were purple and madder-tinted
 By the hour we must be gone.

Then we drove over rolling moorlands
 Where fleeted along each slope
The eeriest, softest colors,
 Fawn, daffodil, heliotrope.

And the sky that waited the bashful
 Girl-moon and her bridesmaid star
Was a clearer pink than the petals
 Of the swamp hibiscus are.

How broad and sheeny and waveless
 The ocean lay in our view,
Faint tints of nacre and beryl
 And of pale rose-jacinth too.

And the little town that patterned
 So clear on the distant sky
With the windmill sails outspreading
 Like the wings of a dragon-fly.

And we dared not laugh or whisper
 Lest a word should be the death
Of the fragile wonder that held us
 As frost holds a passing breath.

—But do you remember, Kathie,
 How suddenly on our right
A great owl soared from the bushes
 Ghost-grey in the waning light?