Page:Emily Dickinson Poems - second series (1891).djvu/180

 168 POEMS.


 * XLV.

S imperceptibly as grief
 * The summer lapsed away, —

Too imperceptible, at last, To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled, As twilight long begun, Or Nature, spending with herself Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in, The morning foreign shone, — A courteous, yet harrowing grace, As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the beautiful.