Classic Poem

See the air filling near by and afar,—
A shadowy host—how brilliant they are!

Silently flitting, spark upon spark,
Gemming the willows out in the dark;

Waking the night in a twinkling surprise,
Making the star-light pale where they rise;

Snowing soft fire-flakes into the grass,
Lighting the face of each daisy they pass;

Startling the darkness, over and over,
Where the sly pimpernel kisses the clover;

Piercing the duskiest heights of the pines;
Drowsily poised on the low-swinging vines;

Suddenly shifting their tapers around,
Now on the fences, and now on the ground,

Now in the bushes and tree-tops, and then
Pitching them far into darkness again;

There like a shooting-star, slowly on wing,
Here like the flash of a dowager's ring;

Setting the dark, croaking hollows a-gleam,
Spangling the gloom of the ghoul-haunted stream;

They pulse and they sparkle in shadowy play,
Like a night fallen down with its stars all astray;

They pulse and they flicker, they kindle afar,
A vanishing host,—but how brilliant they are!