Page:The New Penelope.djvu/310

304 Perchance a lurking breeze

Springs, just awakened to its wayward play,

Tossing the sober trees

Into a frolic maze of ecstasies,

And snatching at the gay

Banners of Autumn, strews them where it please.

The sunset colors glow

A second time in flame from out the wood,

As bright and warm as though

The vanished clouds had fallen, and lodged below

Among the tree-tops, hued

With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.

The fitful breezes die

Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;

And sweetly, mournfully,

Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,

Lone in the upper deep,

Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye;

And for one little hour,

Holds audience with the lesser lights of heaven;

Then to its western bower

Descends in sudden darkness, as the flower

That at the fall of Even

Shuts its bright eye, and yields to slumber's power.

Soon, with a dusky face,

Pensive and proud as an East Indian queen,

And with a solemn grace,

The moon ascends, and takes her royal place

In the fair evening scene;

While all the reverential stars, apace,

Take up their march through the cool fields of space,

And dead is the sweet Autumn day whose close we've seen.