Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). Spoon River Anthology. 1916.

186. Charles Webster

THE PINE woods on the hill,

And the farmhouse miles away,

Showed clear as though behind a lens

Under a sky of peacock blue!

But a blanket of cloud by afternoon

Muffled the earth. And you walked the road

And the clover field, where the only sound

Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo.

Then the sun went down between great drifts

Of distant storms. For a rising wind

Swept clean the sky and blew the flames

Of the unprotected stars

And swayed the russet moon,

Hanging between the rim of the hill

And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard.

You walked the shore in thought

Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills

Singing beneath the water and crying

To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees,

Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot,

And looking up saw Jupiter,

Tipping the spire of the giant pine,

And looking down saw my vacant chair,

Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch—

Be brave, Beloved!