Songs and Sonnets (Coleman)/Dawn

by Helena Jane Coleman

For works with similar titles, see Dawn.

DAWN.

 

The night had brooded long, the air was chill,
Across the open fields the frost bit deep,
The restless, formless mists, that seemed to creep
Like ghostly wraiths, had swallowed up the hill;
The sombre pines had ceased their plaint of ill
But yet uplifted pleading arms, the sheep
And stiff-kneed kine were huddled half asleep,
And all the forest hung inert and still;

When on the silence fell a tenser hush,
A film of grayness smote the dark and spread,
And slowly in the east a trembling flush
Shot upward, till the sullen mists, withdrawn,
Showed all the vanquished shadows fled,
And myriad heralds cried, "The Dawn! the Dawn!"