Classic Poem

The crimson sun has reached the ridge,
I linger on the oaken bridge
Fine-filigreed with yestern snow;
O'er distant wood and rolling park
Film upon film steals on the dark,
And dulls the borrowed eastern glow

No faintest sigh of northwind stirs
The canopy of arching firs,
The alder-branches half-revealed;
A rabbit moves the crispening brake,
The wildfowl flighting from the lake
Wheel high, and circle for the field.

Six months agone the fern was green,
The alders wore their summer sheen,
Close to our feet the wildfowl came:
'Twas here I lingered long with her,
And watched the arrowy kingfisher,
A gleam of hundred-tinted flame.

" Come close, my love, and closer yet, —
One moment never to forget
Through all the looming years of pain;
It wrongs not you, nor him, to kiss
Eyes never more to melt like this,
Lips never to be mine again. "

In all the dreary month of snows
Through yonder ice-locked mere there flows
The never-ceasing central stream:
And through this colder life of mine
Wanders a rivulet divine, —
The rapture of that vanished dream.