Droops the day upon the borders,
As her mantle sways and dips,
Where the golden sunbeams dying,
Kiss the river's silver lips.

Not a shadow breaks the barring,
Cuts the stillness like a sigh,
Save a buzzard's black intaglio
'Gainst the amaranthine sky.

And the blue smoke from the cabins
Veins above the homely sod,
As if born of low-swung censers
Climbing slowly up to God.

Far away, the long light slanting,
Glints the rank alluvial yield,
Pricking in the dusky workers
Winding homeward through the field.

And the breezes, full and drunken
With the wine of autumn, bear
A cadence on the river
Like the prelude of a prayer:

“Gwine home,—gwine home,
Gwine home ter die no mo'!”

Pulsing down the mellow silence
Beats the echo deep and low:
“Gwine home ter libe fur ebber,
Gwine home ter die no mo'!”

Fades the day upon the borders
That her rosy lips have pressed;
Then a darkness shrouds the river,
With an opal in his breast.