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| HOW bright this weird autumnal eve— | |
| While the wild twilight clings around, | |
| Clothing the grasses everywhere, | |
| With scarce a dream of sound! | |
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| The high horizon’s northern line, | 5 |
| With many a silent-leaping spire, | |
| Seems a dark shore,—a sea of flame,— | |
| Quick, crawling waves of fire! | |
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| I stand in dusky solitude, | |
| October breathing low and chill, | 10 |
| And watch the far-off blaze that leaps | |
| At the wind’s wayward will. | |
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| These boundless fields, behold, once more, | |
| Sea-like in vanished summers stir; | |
| From vanished autumns comes the Fire,— | 15 |
| A lone, bright harvester! | |
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| I see wide terror lit before,— | |
| Wild steeds, fierce herds of bison here, | |
| And, blown before the flying flame, | |
| The flying-footed deer! | 20 |
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| Long trains (with shaken bells, that moved | |
| Along red twilights sinking slow) | |
| Whose wheels grew weary on their way, | |
| Far westward, long ago; | |
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| Lone wagons bivouacked in the blaze, | 25 |
| That, long ago, streamed wildly past; | |
| Faces from that bright solitude | |
| In the hot gleam aghast! | |
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| A glare of faces like a dream, | |
| No history after or before, | 30 |
| Inside the horizon with the flames, | |
| The flames,—nobody more! | |
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| That vision vanishes in me, | |
| Sudden and swift and fierce and bright; | |
| Another gentler vision fills | 35 |
| The solitude, to-night: | |
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| The horizon lightens everywhere, | |
| The sunshine rocks on windy maize; | |
| Hark, everywhere are busy men, | |
| And children at their plays! | 40 |
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| Far church-spires twinkle at the sun, | |
| From villages of quiet born, | |
| And, far and near, and everywhere, | |
| Homes stand amid the corn. | |
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| No longer driven by wind, the Fire | 45 |
| Makes all the vast horizon glow, | |
| But, numberless as the stars above, | |
| The windows shine below! | |
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