"A Perfect Day"

A Perfect Day

It is a day lost from some perfect June

            And set within the middle of November.

            It has the golden mystery of September,

And the blue skies of a warm summer noon.

There is a low wind singing an old tune,

            Sung once by tender winds that I remember;

            The soft, high sun burns like a crimson ember

Deep in the blue flame of the air. . . . So soon

A gray and lonely morrow will arise,

            This fair day well is worth the holding fast.

            Behold! how dreamily the mute sea lies

Below; how seabirds lazily drift past;

            And how the mountains, white for centuries,

            Shine on the sky. . . . O day, that thou might’st last!

"A Perfect Day" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).