Classic Poem

4. Sunset.
Beautiful, peaceful,
The Sun has now dipped again to the sea.
Already the heaving waters are tinged
With the deepening night;
Only the evening crimson
Still scatters sparks as of golden tapers,
And the mighty force of the tide,
Drives to shore all the snowy surf-waves
Which hurry on, hasty and gleeful,
Like flocks of woolly lambkins
Which, as the night falls, whistling, the shepherd
Drives to their fold.

" How lovely the sun is! "
Thus spoke my friend after a long-drawn silence,
Wandering along the shore with me;
And joking half, and half in sadness,
He thus assured me: " A lovely girl
Is the Sun, who, loving honours and lucre,
Has wedded the hoar Sea-God.
The livelong day she wanders, rejoicing,
High in the skies, arrayed in purple,
And blazing with brilliants,
Beloved of all, admired of all men,
And of all things created.
Gladdening the hearts of all creatures around her
With the light and warmth of her glances;
But with the nightfall, cheerless, a victim
Must she return again
To the watery home, to the barren arms
Of her hoary old spouse. "

" Trust me! " added my friend,
Laughing and sighing, and laughing again,
" Theirs is the tenderest marriage!
For either they slumber or they are quarrelling,
Till even here loud trembles the sea,
And the seaman hears in the echoing waves
How the old fellow scolds his wife:
" Thou round universal harlot!
Radiant wanton!
The whole long day glowing for others,
But at night only weary and icy for me!"
And after much curtain-lecturing,
As matter of course, the haughty Sun
Bursts forth into weeping, her misery bewailing;
Wails such a weary time that the Sea-God,
Desperate, leaps from his bed on a sudden,
Quick swimming up to the ocean-surface
For air, to recover his senses.
'Twas thus I beheld him only last night,
Issuing breast-high from the waters.
He wore just a jacket of yellow flannel,
With it a nightcap white as a lily,
Above his withered face. "