Now a new darkness falls across the land.
The air is strange, the startled birds are flying,
Circling above their nests, low-winged and crying.
In a green dusk the shadowed mountains stand.

This slow approaching dark is not the night.
It may be the world's end, the end of time;
Stars may drop, and a cold wave of space climb
Forever between us and warmth, and light.

Fold close about you your remembered hours
Of hot earth, blue leaf shadow, golden spire
Reaching above the ranks of meadow flowers,
Delight of the eye, the pulse, in the sun's fire.
Before this long impending wave has rolled
Over you, before you have grown blank and cold.

The insects in the grass tune a night sound.
The wind is cool, the moon is moving over.
The sun is almost lost beneath its cover,
And draws thin crescent patterns on the ground.

Now is the moment of the total dark.
Yet this celestial fire does not die;
In iridescent flame it lights the sky
A brighter halo for the moon's dull mark.

Welcome the shadow set against your sun,
That for an instant shields your too frail sight.
Look close into its darkness; you may find
The spark of a fresh universe begun;
The far revealing sources of a light
That, all unshadowed, might have struck you blind.