A WINDY DAY

The dawn was a dawn of splendor,

And the blue of the morning skies

Was as placid and deep and tender

As the blue of a baby’s eyes;

The sunshine flooded the mountain,

And flashed over land and sea

Like the spray of a glittering fountain.—

But the wind—the wind—Ah me!

Like a weird invisible spirit,

It swooped in its airy flight;

And the earth, as the stress drew near it,

Quailed as in mute affright;

The grass in the green fields quivered—

The waves of the smitten brook

Chillily shuddered and shivered,

And the reeds bowed down and shook.

Like a sorrowful miserere

It sobbed, and it blew and blew,

Till the leaves on the trees looked weary,

And my prayers were weary, too;

And then, like the sunshine’s glimmer

That failed in the awful strain,

All the hope of my eyes grew dimmer

In a spatter of spiteful rain.