Lever de Rideau
To-day
the clocks strike
seven, seven, seven, and church-bells
chime busily, and the plain-town heavily wakes;
a salt-sharp east wind flicks and swells
and tosses my emerald silk curtains;
translucent green on blue the empyrean, and lo!
north and west, endlessly limned and painted,
my mountains, my mountains, all snow.
Now a change begins in the heavenly tone-chord;
to the east, eyes! where the sea is incised
like azure ice on sky of vermeil;
oh, dream on prolonged, beautiful prelude!
hushed still, delay, summoning bird-song!
hold, magic touch, be arrested, lovely crisis of sunrise!
when yonder death-white summits are rose-flushed
and glittering, I must
away.
From Day and Night (Caxton, 1939)
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