| THE PINE woods on the hill, | |
| And the farmhouse miles away, | |
| Showed clear as though behind a lens | |
| Under a sky of peacock blue! | |
| But a blanket of cloud by afternoon | 5 |
| Muffled the earth. And you walked the road | |
| And the clover field, where the only sound | |
| Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. | |
| Then the sun went down between great drifts | |
| Of distant storms. For a rising wind | 10 |
| Swept clean the sky and blew the flames | |
| Of the unprotected stars | |
| And swayed the russet moon, | |
| Hanging between the rim of the hill | |
| And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard. | 15 |
| You walked the shore in thought | |
| Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills | |
| Singing beneath the water and crying | |
| To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees, | |
| Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot, | 20 |
| And looking up saw Jupiter, | |
| Tipping the spire of the giant pine, | |
| And looking down saw my vacant chair, | |
| Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch— | |
| Be brave, Beloved! | 25 |
