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 clustering spears of light
Enter the cloudy 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 lustrous eyes.
Then came the moon like a deserted queen,
In blanchÈd weed and pensive loneliness;
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.