Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Sunset on the Kekoughton River
By James Barron Hope (18291887)S
Lattice bars across the blue,—
Where the moon in pallid beauty
Like an angel gazes through!
By the fading sunset kissed,
Slowly rises up the vapor
In a cloud of ghostly mist.
Its last grains of golden sand,
What a holy quiet hovers
Over all the drowsy land!
Of a silence calm and deep,
Over all the placid waters
Where the pale mist seems asleep.
Down the river to the bay,
Show on spreading sheets of canvas
Tints that change from red to gray.
Of the tide upon the bar:
See each little breaker playing
With the image of a star!
Bowed with age, or fresh in youth,
Give back brokenly the image
Of each grand, celestial truth.
And the scene is one of rest,
As the wrecked day drifts down grandly
To be stranded in the West,
High above the village spire,
On its mighty, purple headlands
And its crags all tipped with fire.