What miracle is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys--look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were goblin floats, Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! And in the piles the water frolics clear, The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, And we--we can behold that could but hear The ancient River singing as he goes New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take His hobnailed way to work! Let us too pass: Through these long blindfold rows Of casements staring blind to right and left, Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece Of life in death's own likeness--Life bereft Of living looks as by the Great Release (Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows. Reach upon reach of burial--so they feel, These colonies of dreams! And as we steal Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze That frolics at our heel, Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, We might--thus awed, thus lonely that we are-- Be wandering some depopulated star, Some world of memories and unbroken graves, So broods the abounding Silence near and far: Till even your footfall craves Forgiveness of the majesty it braves. II _Scherzando_ Down through the ancient Strand The Spirit of October, mild and boon And sauntering, takes his way This golden end of afternoon, As though the corn stood yellow in all the land And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.