Music, and Other Poems

INDIAN SUMMER

     A soft veil dims the tender skies,
     And half conceals from pensive eyes
       The bronzing tokens of the fall;
     A calmness broods upon the hills,
     And summer's parting dream distills
       A charm of silence over all.

     The stacks of corn, in brown array,
     Stand waiting through the placid day,
       Like tattered wigwams on the plain;
     The tribes that find a shelter there
     Are phantom peoples, forms of air,
       And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.

     At evening when the crimson crest
     Of sunset passes down the West,
       I hear the whispering host returning;
     On far-off fields, by elm and oak,
     I see the lights, I smell the smoke,—
       The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.

                         Tertius and Henry Van Dyke.

     November, 1903.