Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/101

Rh On hillside berries and marish seeds,— All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man’s vision returns again! And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old he found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown!

windows flashing to the sky, Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, Far down the vale, my friend and I Beheld the old and quiet town; The ghostly sails that out at sea Flapped their white wings of mystery; The beaches glimmering in the sun, And the low wooded capes that run Into the sea-mist north and south; The sand-bluffs at the river’s mouth; The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, The foam-line of the harbor-bar.

Over the woods and meadow-lands A crimson-tinted shadow lay, Of clouds through which the setting day Flung a slant glory far away. It glittered on the wet sea-sands, It flamed upon the city’s panes, Smote the white sails of ships that wore Outward or in, and glided o’er The steeples with their veering vanes!