| Poems by Women |
After Sunset
I have an understanding with the hills
At evening
when the slanted radiance fills
Their hollows, and the great winds let them
be,
And they are quiet and look down at me.
Oh, then I see the patience in
their eyes
Out of the centuries that made them wise.
They lend me hoarded
memory and I learn
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern,
And
why a dream of forests must endure
Though every tree be slain: and how
the pure,
Invisible beauty has a word so brief
A flower can say it or a
shaken leaf,
But few may ever snare it in a song,
Though for the quest a
life is not too long.
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The
twilight close with gesture beautiful,
And shadows are their garments, and
the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer, --
Their arms are strong
around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still
land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And
silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and
war.
From: Rittenhouse, Jessie B.
The Second Book of Modern Verse (1919).
This poet:
[Author index]
This collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.
Collection © 1999-2002 Jone Johnson Lewis.
Citing poems from these pages:
| Author. "Poem Title." Women's History: Poems by Women. Jone Johnson Lewis, editor. URL: (date of logon) |
