Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTER SUNSET - LAKE WEELOKENEBAKOK, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTER SUNSET - LAKE WEELOKENEBAKOK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: At twilight azescohos standeth
Last Line: Shall be for us color and music?
Subject(s): Evening; Lakes; Sunset; Twilight; Pools; Ponds


AT twilight Azescohos standeth
With domes that are builded of color:
Its deep-wrinkled strata and boulders,
Its sombre-leaved greenness of noonday,
Fade, lost in the blue misty splendor
That seems like the soul of a color;
While far, far away to the eastward
One vast fading glory of scarlet—
A color that seems as if living—
Possesses the sky like a passion,
And higher and higher in heaven
Fades out in the soft bluish greenness
That climbs to the zenith above us.
Below, far below, as if thinking,
At rest lies the sensitive lake; and
Like one who sings but to her own heart
Such thoughts as a loving lip whispers,
Thus deep in the waters are pictured
The beauty of sunset and hillside.
For the blue that was blue on the mountain,
Seen deep in the heart of the water,
Hath the touch of some blessing upon it,—
Some strangeness of purity in it,
Like color that shall be in heaven.
This water-held vision of sunset,
Ablaze in the depths of the darkness,
Is it but for the sight? Canst not hear it,
This prophet of color, to tell us
Of what may be yet, when the senses
Awaken to lordlier being,
And the thought of the blind man is ours:
When colors unearthly men know not
Shall float from the trumpets of angels,
And tints of the glory of heaven
Shall be for us color and music?





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