VANISHINGS

As one whose eyes have watched the stricken day

Swoon to its crimson death adown the sea,

Turning his face to eastward suddenly

Sees a lack-lustre world all chill and gray,—

Then, wandering sunless whitherso he may,

Feels the first dubious dumb obscurity,

And vague foregloomings of the Dark to be,

Close like a sadness round his glimmering way;

So I, from drifting dreambound on and on

About strange isles of utter bliss, in seas

Whose waves are unimagined melodies,

Rose and beheld the dreamless world anew:

Sad were the fields, and dim with splendours gone

The strait sky-glimpses fugitive and few.