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The Mist

When Sunset's golden light in purple wanes,
And twilight gently lulls a weary Earth,
A wraith comes stealing from the dark'ning hills,
And glides in coiling greyness, far below,
To shroud the silver winding of the vale.

It stills the rustle of the trembling leaf,
That echoes all day long the whispering wind,
And paints in misty pigment, softer far,
The mossy ruin of an olden pile,
Than Daylight's brush in noonday colour clear.

Then creeping far beyond its earthern walls,
It meets a city by the western sea,
Whose spires are lost in hazy formlessness,
And lights loom yellow through the murky air,
And sounds are dimmed in half heard murmuring.

So wraith-like mists creep through the lands of mind,
And with confusion wrap its topmost towers.
Now dull the ray of Wisdom's guiding torch,
That lights the wanderer through the darkness vast,
Along the streets of fear and ignorance.

Then Error stalks in cloak of grey deceit
As seeming truth; but mocking make-believe
Of glam'rous mystery hiding all its lies,
And tempts the souls that pass, with promised feast
On boards that groan with only empty husks.

Until each night of Earth and Life has passed,
And morning rides with horses of the Sun,
The boldest even—pause and gently tread,
Perhaps muse awhile, on memories of things gone,
Ere follow too, the chariots of the Day.

—E. F. H.