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EVENING IN SUMMER, by                    
First Line: The sun has set at last! The sky
Last Line: The world with a perpetual song.
Subject(s): Summer


The sun has set at last! The sky,
That all the hot and stifling day
Hung like a burning arch on high,
Grows, as the fierce heat dies away,
Cool and refreshing; o'er the glades
The hills frown giant-like and grim,
And meadows, in the misty shades
Of night, look shadowy and dim.

The sun is down; yet in the west
Is lingering still the day's last light,
Around the hills his glory blest
When sinking slowly from the sight;
And, far above the mountain brown,
Along the dreamy azure, sleep
The small white clouds like tufts of down
Upon the bosom of the deep.

As twilight fades, how all the earth
The night with solemn gladness fills!
The moon, as fair as at her birth,
Where heaven is wedded to the hills
Through fleecy clouds around her flung,
Wheels up beside the same sweet star
That with her, when the sky was young,
Looked over Eden from afar.

Beneath the moon the wild brook learns
Its own sweet music; o'er the plain
The tired husbandman returns,
Rejoicing, to his home again,—
While from the dense old forest trees
Where, shrouded from the scorching heat,
All day it slept, the evening breeze
Comes sweeping up the dusty street,—

And, passing on its mission, goes
To cool the parched and fevered soil,
To bless the fainting vine that throws
Its tendrils round the door of toil,
And stir the myriad leaves, until
Their rising murmur swells along,
With all life's utterances that fill
The world with a perpetual song.





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