Sunset On The Bearcamp

A gold fringe on the purpling hem     Of hills the river runs,     As down its long, green valley falls     The last of summers suns.     Along its tawny gravel-bed     Broad-flowing, swift, and still,     As if its meadow levels felt     The hurry of the hill,     Noiseless between its banks of green     From curve to curve it slips;     The drowsy maple-shadows rest     Like fingers on its lips.     A waif from Carrolls wildest hills,     Unstoried and unknown;     The ursine legend of its name     Prowls on its banks alone.     Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn     As ever Yarrow knew,     Or, under rainy Irish skies,     By Spensers Mulla grew;     And through the gaps of leaning trees     Its mountain cradle shows     The gold against the amethyst,     The green against the rose.     Touched by a light that hath no name,     A glory never sung,     Aloft on sky and mountain wall     Are Gods great pictures hung.     How changed the summits vast and old!     No longer granite-browed,     They melt in rosy mist; the rock     Is softer than the cloud;     The valley holds its breath; no leaf     Of all its elms is twirled:     The silence of eternity     Seems falling on the world.     The pause before the breaking seals     Of mystery is this;     Yon miracle-play of night and day     Makes dumb its witnesses.     What unseen altar crowns the hills     That reach up stair on stair?     What eyes look through, what white wings fan     These purple veils of air?     What Presence from the heavenly heights     To those of earth stoops down?     Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods     On Idas snowy crown!     Slow fades the vision of the sky,     The golden water pales,     And over all the valley-land     A gray-winged vapor sails.     I go the common way of all;     The sunset fires will burn,     The flowers will blow, the river flow,     When I no more return.     No whisper from the mountain pine     Nor lapsing stream shall tell     The stranger, treading where I tread,     Of him who loved them well.     But beauty seen is never lost,     Gods colors all are fast;     The glory of this sunset heaven     Into my soul has passed,     A sense of gladness unconfined     To mortal date or clime;     As the soul liveth, it shall live     Beyond the years of time.     Beside the mystic asphodels     Shall bloom the home-born flowers,     And new horizons flush and glow     With sunset hues of ours.     Farewell! these smiling hills must wear     Too soon their wintry frown,     And snow-cold winds from off them shake     The maples red leaves down.     But I shall see a summer sun     Still setting broad and low;     The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,     The golden water flow.     A lovers claim is mine on all     I see to have and hold,     The rose-light of perpetual hills,     And sunsets never cold!