Where, struck with sunset light, the shining rails
Converge upon our track,
The smoky canopy of London veils
The distant heaven with black.
Behind us, dropping further in our wake,
The lessening city lies,
And all the landscape has begun to take
A glamour from the skies.
Scarcely a cloud the sun’s effulgence shields
From evening’s stealthy hand;
But half the crimson disc beyond the fields
Stares on the level land.
Through the moist meadows, broad on either side,
Merged to one dusky plain,
There sounds, the breathing stillness to divide,
The clanking of the train.
And cooling silence, like a wave of balm,
After the city’s heat,
Is spread around us, odourous and calm,
With foam of meadowsweet.
In the damp ditches ranging from the line
Towards the lighted west
Tall spires of blossom, dimly white, define
A sweetness manifest.
And now the last red rim is vanishing,
Leaving the sky-line cold,
And mists, transfigured, to the grasses cling
Like gossamer of gold.
The dusk descends; between us and the town
The gliding miles increase;
And on our souls there settles softly down
An all-enfolding peace.
❦