Below, the sea lies blue and cold as steel,
And smooth as satin stretched from
shore to shore,
Save where a shimmering fish leaps;
or an oar
Reeking
with crimson rises; or the keel
Of
some ship lets a rough path backward reel;
The sun―a flaming thing―sinks low
and lower
And beats upon the West’s unclosing
door;
The
shadows downward creep and reach to feel,
With
long black fingers, if the day be dead;
Above, the sky glows like a pearl
alight
With a rose-diamond’s shifting gold
and red;
And
o’er the eastern mountains, soft and white,
The moon steps, trembling, from her
silver bed―
A virgin bride―to meet the lips of
night.
"February Night" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).
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