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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Song: ‘We sail toward evening’s lonely star’

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Song: ‘We sail toward evening’s lonely star’

By Celia Laighton Thaxter (1835–1894)

WE sail toward evening’s lonely star

That trembles in the tender blue;

One single cloud, a dusky bar,

Burnt with dull carmine through and through,

Slow smouldering in the summer sky,

Lies low along the fading west

How sweet to watch its splendors die,

Wave-cradled thus and wind-caressed!

The soft breeze freshens, leaps the spray

To kiss our cheeks, with sudden cheer;

Upon the dark edge of the bay

Light-houses kindle, far and near,

And through the warm deeps of the sky

Steal faint star-clusters, while we rest

In deep refreshment, thou and I,

Wave-cradled thus and wind-caressed.

How like a dream are earth and heaven,

Star-beam and darkness, sky and sea;

Thy face, pale in the shadowy even.

Thy quiet eyes that gaze on me!

O realize the moment’s charm,

Thou dearest! we are at life’s best,

Folded in God’s encircling arm,

Wave-cradled thus and wind-caressed.