s
Sewing the pale-gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue,--
Whose brilliant body but a needle is,
An azurn and incarnate ray:--
But here, where haunted with the shade,
The dull stream stales and dies,
Are beauties none or few,
Such sinister and new;
And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid
Beneath the timid skies;
So, if you ask me why I answer this:--

You know not; only where the kildees wade
There in the foamy scum,
There where the wet rocks ail,--
Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come,
Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,--
Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail
Below, an angled sparkle rayed,
While lights and shadows aid
From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail
The heart; with lips that writhe and fade
And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross,
And flabby hair of smoky moss.

A brimstone sunset. And at night
The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel
Through copse and open, all a gnomish green.
I hear the water, and the wave is white
There where the boulder plants a keel,
And each taunt ripple 's sheen.--
Where instant insects dot
The dark with spurts of sulphur--bright,
Beneath the hazy height,
No bitter-almond trees make wan the night,
Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre,
But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster:
Huge-seen within that twilight spot--
As if a hill-born giant, half asleep,
Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep
Foldward through fallow browns
And foxy grays,--a something crowns
The knoll--is it the odorous peak
Of one June-savory timothy stack?

Now, one dead ash behind,
A weak moon shows a withered cheek
Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines'
Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines:
Beyond these, back and back,
An oak-wood stretches black--
And here the whining were-wolves of the wind
Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind,
Although their fangs are fierce;
And though they never pierce
Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak,
I hear them, yes, I hear
A padding o' footsteps near,
A prowling pant in ear
And can not fly!--yes!--no!--
What horror holds me?--That uncoiling slow,
Sure, mastering chimera there,
Hoop