Evening In Summer

Confess'd from yonder slow-extinguish'd clouds,

All ether softening, sober Evening

Her wonted station in the middle air;

She sends on earth; then that of deeper

Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,

In circle following circle, gathers round,

To close the face of things.

A fresher

Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,

Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;

While the quail clamours for his running mate.

Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,

A whitening shower of vegetable

Amusive floats.

The kind impartial

Of Nature nought disdains: thoughtful to

Her lowest songs, and clothe the coming year,

From field to field the feather'd seed she wings.

Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,

The glowworm lights his gem; and through the darkA moving radiance twinkles.

Evening

The world to Night; not in her winter

Of massy Stygian woof, but loose

In mantle dun.

A faint erroneous ray,

Glanced from th' imperfect surfaces of things,

Flings half an image on the straining eye;

While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,

And rocks, and mountain tops, that long

Th' ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,

Uncertain if beheld.