Page:Poems Ripley.djvu/31

And gaily strewn with purple asters wild—
And white ones gleamed where the waning sunlight smiled;
 And clumps of shrub-like sumachs lent a scarlet glow.—
     While murmuring low

The little brook went sparkling on its way.
And right above, and millions of miles away,
 In the purple sky, there hung the ascending moon—
     The round, pale moon—

And silvered all the little valley. In
The west, the sky above the sinking rim
 Of the golden sun, was a cloud-like mass of flame,—
     Too fair to name.

And the city, (called along the Lakes the Gem)
Blue waters bordering it like to a hem,
 Stretched out before me in the dim half-light
     Of the soft twilight.

And at my feet a soft, green aftermath
Did thickly border all the gravelly path,
 That wound adown the hill to the sparkling brook
     In its silvered nook.

And thickly on the cool, green verdure lay
That moisture sent from clouds at close of day,
 To scatter freshness and all life renew:
     Great pearls of dew.

Ah, grand, inspiring was the lovely scene.
One of the loveliest I had ever seen!
 A majesty did all about it twine
     Wrought by a pen divine!

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