A SILKEN curtain veils the skies, And half conceals from pensive eyes The bronzing tokens of the fall; A calmness broods upon the hills, And summer's parting dream distils A charm of silence over all. The stacks of corn, in brown array, Stand waiting through the tranquil day, Like tattered wigwams on the plain; The tribes that find a shelter there Are phantom peoples, forms of air, And ghosts of vanished joy and pain. At evening when the crimson crest Of sunset passes down the West, I hear the whispering host returning; On far-off fields, by elm and oak, I see the lights, I smell the smoke, -- The Camp-fires of the Past are burning. |