Sunset on the Kekoughton River. James Barron Hope (1829-1887). Southern States: Kekoughton, the River, Va. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. 1876-79. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes. America: Vols. XXV-XXIX

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Southern States: Kekoughton, the River, Va.

Sunset on the Kekoughton River

James Barron Hope (1829–1887)


SEE the scattered clouds of evening,—
Lattice bars across the blue,—
Where the moon in pallid beauty
Like an angel gazes through!

Over all the winding river,	5
By the fading sunset kissed,
Slowly rises up the vapor
In a cloud of ghostly mist.

While the eve is slowly turning
Its last grains of golden sand,	10
What a holy quiet hovers
Over all the drowsy land!

There is now the spell of silence,
Of a silence calm and deep,
Over all the placid waters	15
Where the pale mist seems asleep.

And the vessels, slowly gliding
Down the river to the bay,
Show on spreading sheets of canvas
Tints that change from red to gray.	20

All is quiet, save the murmur
Of the tide upon the bar:
See each little breaker playing
With the image of a star!

And ’t is thus that human creatures,	25
Bowed with age, or fresh in youth,
Give back brokenly the image
Of each grand, celestial truth.

Now the brooding silence deepens,
And the scene is one of rest,	30
As the wrecked day drifts down grandly
To be stranded in the West,

On yon rugged coast of Cloudland
High above the village spire,
On its mighty, purple headlands	35
And its crags all tipped with fire.