Nature-Sketch

An orange warmth of after-sunset floods
The darkening hills, and then the twilight-swoon
Comes gathering in with eve's unnumbered buds
Dimly-pulsating to the blossomed moon.
The after-silence of the last lone bird
Which twitters a pale drop of note and stops
The whole night long, is like a depth of word
Which from some lonely poet's being drops
Into an after-life of hush complete,
Or like a burning star of sound which comes
Out of the aeons like a twinkled beat
Drowned in the depths of dark milleniums.
Out of the silvern dark the ocean rolls;
Its billows to my visioned soul respond
How like a giant rhythm-roll of souls
Met at a festival of diamond.
There is a brooding silence in the air
Welled from the winged Farness on whose rim
Dawn-colours all invisibly prepare
Bright pinioned majesties of seraphim.
One cloud moves slowly yonder like a blotch
Of silver-edged gloom which seeks and seeks.
Here from my plot of earth I sit and watch
The night, the motherhood of glows and streaks.
How mighty is the universe;–the sky,
The cloud, the star, the water and the night!
But mightier than each of these am I
Who do contain in me both dark and light.