Classic Poem

Across the waste of dreary veldt,
Unmarked by hut, or knoll, or hollow,
The lifeless mountain's arid belt
Trends southward, far as eye can follow.

A fitful rain is dripping still,
Close to the plain the swifts are skimming;
The thirsty soil has drunk its fill,
And left a thousand pools a-brimming.

The west is rapt from sight and sense,
Lost in a haze of fairy yellow;
A sadness, born we know not whence,
Falls with that light divinely mellow:

Where hangs unseen the guiding Cross,
The lightning's magic veil is lifting,
Clouds like Atlantic billows toss,
From summit on to summit drifting;

Eastward, a cold unearthly sheen
Of mists fantastically riven,
All steel and silver damascene,
Bright armour for the hosts of heaven

Unbidden memories of home
The stranger landscape seem to hallow,—
The tender touch of English Crome
On Norfolk broad, and stream, and shallow,—

A dream of looming towers that crown
A northern city's smoke and shadow,
Where Lincoln Church looks stately down
On flooded fen and steaming meadow.

One moment,—off the vanished sun
A redder fire of glory flushes,
The pools grow rosy one by one,
The pallid east in answer blushes;

Another,—half the glow is gone,
The near and far in shade are blended,
Black-plumaged night flies swiftly on,
The curtain falls,—the dream is ended.