The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler/The Sunset Hour

The Sunset Hour
No! I have not forgotten yet the gentle sunset hour, That comes with such a soothing touch, to shut the brightleaved flower; Nor have I yet forgotten those, who shared its light with me, Amidst a scene I fondly love, though distant far it be.

A gleaming of its parting light is lingering even now, With dim and faded brilliancy, around my lifted brow; While memory flings aside the veil that hangs o'er parted things, And drives the shadow from the past, before her glancing wings.

I seem to see thee, gentle friend, before me even yet! So meekly in thy wonted place, beside the casement set, With calm still brow and placid eye across the landscape bent, Where all of nature's varied charms are beautifully blent.

The gliding stream, the low white mill, the hill upswelling high, With its few crowning forest-trees so painted on the sky; The vine-hung crag, the shadowy wood, the fields of tufted maize, And emerald meadow-slopes, that gleam beneath the sunset rays.

In sooth, it is a lovely scene; alas! that some as fair, Man's lawless selfishness should make the home of dark despair. That ‘midst glad nature's purity, the bending slave should tread, And proud oppression o'er the earth a waste of anguish spread!

Hath God's rich mercy form'd the earth so beautifully bright, For man to wrap his brother's soul in gloominess and night? That all its charms must be unseen, its loveliness unfelt, By eyes and hearts all dimm'd and broke by cruelty and guilt.

No! never hath he meant that those, within whose forms are shrined The rich and deep capacities of an undying mind, Should ‘neath a brother's foot be crush'd, be loaded with his chains, And drain, to feed his riot waste, the life-blood from their veins.