TO AN EVENING CLOUD.

Thou beautiful cloud, a glorious hue is thine!

I cannot think, as thy bright dyes appear

To my enraptured gaze, that thou wert born

Of Evening’s exhalations: more sublime,

Light-giver! is thy birth-place, than of earth.

Wert thou not formed to herald in the day,

And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light?

Or art thou but a harbinger of rains

To budding May?—or in thy subtle screen

Nursest the lightnings that affright the world?

Or wert thou born of th’ thin aërial mist

That shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain’s brow?

Whate’er thou art, I gaze on thee with joy.

Spread thy wings o’er the empyrean, and away

Fleetly athwart the untravelled wilds of space,

To where the Sun-light sheds his earliest beams,

And blaze the stars, that vision vainly scans

In distant regions of the universe!

Tell me, Air-wanderer! in what burning zone

Thou wilt appear, when from the azure vault

Of our high heaven thy majesty shall fade;

Tell me, winged Vapor! where hath been thy home

Through the unchangeable serene of noon?

Whate’er thy garniture, where’er thy course,

Would I could follow thee in thy far flight,

When the south wind of eve is low and soft,

And my thought rises to the mighty source

Of all sublimity! O fleeting cloud,

Would I were with thee in the solemn night!