An Autumn Sunset

by Edith Wharton

　　     I

　　Leaguered in fire

　　The wild black promontories of the coast extend

　　Their savage silhouettes;

　　The sun in universal carnage sets,

　　And, halting higher,

　　The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,

　　Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,

　　That, balked, yet stands at bay.

　　Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day

　　In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,

　　A wan valkyrie whose wide pinions shine

　　Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,

　　And in her lifted hand swings high o'erhead,

　　Above the waste of war,

　　The silver torch-light of the evening star

　　Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.

　　     II

　　Lagooned in gold,

　　Seem not those jetty promontories rather

　　The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,

　　Uncomforted of morn,

　　Where old oblivions gather,

　　The melancholy, unconsoling fold

　　Of all things that go utterly to death

　　And mix no more, no more

　　With life's perpetually awakening breath?

　　Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,

　　Over such sailless seas,

　　To walk with hope's slain importunities

　　In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not

　　All things be there forgot,

　　Save the sea's golden barrier and the black

　　Closecrouching promontories?

　　Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,

　　Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,

　　A spectre self-destroyed,

　　So purged of all remembrance and sucked back

　　Into the primal void,

　　That should we on that shore phantasmal meet

　　I should not know the coming of your feet?