Classic Poem

Like some triumphal Orient pageantry,
Beheld afar in slow and stately march,
Glittering with gold and crimson blazonry,
Till lost at length through many a dusky arch,
I saw the day's last clustered spears of light
Enter the clouded portals of the night.

The wind whose brazen clarions had blown
Imperious fanfarons before the sun
All the brief winter afternoon, died down,
And in the hush of twilight, one by one,
Like maidens leaning from high balconies,
The early stars looked forth with veiled eyes.

Then came the moon like a deserted queen
In blanched weed and pensive loveliness;
Not as she rises in midsummer green,
Hailed by a festal world in gala dress,
With thin sweet incense swung from buds and leaves
And strident minstrelsy of August eves;

But treading in cold calm the frozen plain
With bare white feet and argent torch aloft,
Unheralded through all her drear domain
Save where the cricket sang in sheltered croft,
And faintly heard in fitful monotone,
A solitary owl made shuddering moan.