Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
A Prairie Ride
By Margaret Stewart SibleyA
We rode at day’s declining:
What radiant pictures we beheld,
In heavenly ether shining!
And melts into the golden,
Across the azure, crimson bars,
Like some escutcheon olden.
Where countless islets cluster;
Green sumac clumps, that wear not yet
The autumn’s scarlet lustre.
The varied tints of budding leaves,
The long, cool shadows lying
Across the grass, weird shapes of clouds
Before the breezes flying;
The mourning dove’s complaining,
The doleful tale the katydid
Repeats, no answer gaining;
With sense of summer’s being;
And Nature wears her choicest dress
For those with eyes for seeing!
To neutral tint uncertain,
And swiftly, fold on fold, descends
The evening’s sombre curtain.
O’er phloxes and verbenas;
The quiet holds us like a charm,
No word is said between us.
Shine in the twilight faintly,
While rising in the dusky east
The moon glows white and saintly.
Beneath the wind’s cool kisses:
Will life or earth e’er yield again
A joy as pure as this is?