Classic Poem

Now the veiled sun is drooping to his fall,
Weaving the western landscape a thick pall
From the gigantic Air-smoke, through it slant
His stretching beams, the mighty figures daunt
The eye, far-shading level smoke that side,
While eastward the white towns in sunshine ride.
But all around this wonderful, wild haze,
Like a hot crucible wherein the days
And nights are melted by a giant hand,
A terrible world, neither sea nor land,
As if at last old earth had caught on fire,
And slowly mouldering, sank into the pyre.
To the dull north, a skeleton so dim,
Is gray Monadnoc's head, and half of him,
Looming out vaguely, as Gibraltar's rock
Off Estepona, when the east wind's shock
After a long gale from the sparkling west,
Comes coldly down, but warms the seaman's breast,
Anxious to fly Mediterranean calm,
And clasp the ocean with his daring palm.
Beneath the sun, like Saladin's bright blade,
One glittering lake cuts golden the wide shade,
And on some faint-drawn hill-sides fires are burning,
The far blue smoke their outlines soft in-urning,
And now half-seen the Peterboro' hills,
Peep out like black-fish, nothing but their gills.
Each feature of the scene itself confounded.
Like Turner's pallet with strange colors grounded,
It seems to gain upon me, shut me in,
Creeps up to the brown belfry where I spin
My fancies, like that last Man Campbell painted,
Who finally 'tis to be hoped was sainted.