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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Sunset

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Sunset

By José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905)

Translation of Maurice Francis Egan

THE SUNLIT brush light to the dark rock lends,

And gilds the summit of the mountain dome

Where sets the sun; beyond—a bar of foam—

The endless sea begins where the earth ends:

Beneath me, night and silence; tired man wends

To where the smoking chimney marks his home.

The Angelus, deadened by the mists that roam,

In the vast murmur of the ocean blends.

As from the depth of an abyss, the sound

Of far-off voices in the space around

Comes from belated herdsmen with their clan.

The western sky is clothed in shadows gray;

The sun on rich dark clouds sinks slow away

And shuts the gold sticks of his crimson fan.