Shifting Scenes and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Nature herself lay still, and dumb, and cold;
Gone were her summer garments fringed with gold,
Her gorgeous sunsets, streaked with crimson bars—
Darkling in violet depths, shot through with light—
Deepening in splendour as the enchantress, Night,
Gathered and creamed the dim light into stars;
Gone were her balms and blooms, her hum of bees,
Her sweet-mouthed zephyrs toying with the trees,
Her honeyed murmurings under hedge-rows dim,

123

Where happy lovers spent their evening hours,
Her festival array of cups and flowers,
Full of rich nectar to the fiery brim;
Gone was the banquet and the golden sheen,
The lights were out, the revelry was o'er,
And she who, erstwhile, was a crownèd queen,
Shivered a beggar at her palace-door.
Giving scant welcome to the new-born child,
She seized him in her stiff arms, lank and cold,
And held him out upon the wintry wold,
To look upon the desolation, strange and wild,
Which weirdly shuddered down on farm and fold,
In rain, and sleet, and silent-falling snow—
Wrapping the heavens in a pall above,
And the dead earth in a white shroud below.