Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON.

  Slow flapping to the setting sun
    By twos and threes, in wavering rows,
    As twilight shadows dimly close,
  The crows fly over Washington.

  Under the crimson sunset sky
  Virginian woodlands leafless lie,
    In wintry torpor bleak and dun.
  Through the rich vault of heaven, which shines
    Like a warmed opal in the sun,
  With wide advance in broken lines
    The crows fly over Washington.

  Over the Capitol's white dome,
    Across the obelisk soaring bare
  To prick the clouds, they travel home,
  Content and weary, winnowing
    With dusky vans the golden air,
  Which hints the coming of the spring,
    Though winter whitens Washington.

  The dim, deep air, the level ray
  Of dying sunlight on their plumes,
    Give them a beauty not their own;
  Their hoarse notes fail and faint away;
    A rustling murmur floating down
  Blends sweetly with the thickening glooms;
  They touch with grace the fading day,
    Slow flying over Washington.

  I stand and watch with clouded eyes
    These dim battalions move along;
  Out of the distance memory cries
    Of days when life and hope were strong,
  When love was prompt and wit was gay;
  Even then, at evening, as to-day,
    I watched, while twilight hovered dim
    Over Potomac's curving rim,
  This selfsame flight of homing crows
  Blotting the sunset's fading rose,
    Above the roofs of Washington.