Our Last Walk (Sarah Helen Whitman to Ruth Burgess Burleigh)

                      OUR LAST WALK 
                             to R.B.B

The October day was dying, the dark sea
     Flushed crimson at the coming of the sun;
The ripened year lay drowning on the lea,
     Like a tired reaper when his task is done.

Slowly we loitered o’er twilight wold
     Through velvet sheep-walks, and where reedy plumes
And nodding fern tufts, tipped with tawny gold,
     Fringe the dark borders where the gentian blooms.

The very crickets seem to drone and dream,
     As if they felt the sweet mysterious charm
Of the hushed evening, and attuned their theme
     To its low cadences of slumberous calm.

With scarlet hips and sprays of purpling leaves
     The brier-rose in the bosky thickets burned,
The maples flamed beneath the forest eaves, 
     And their cold gloom to sudden splendor turned.

The level sunbeams glinted through the trees
     And flecked with arrowy light their verdant mold,
And bound red baldricks round their gnarled knees
     And fringed the tufted knolls with ravelled gold.

Our woodland path was dim with tender dreams
     Of the past summer and a pensive gloom,
Lit by the rosy sunset’s dying gleams,
     Filled the long arches of our sylvan room:—

Sweet haunting memories of our golden noons,
     Our twilight wanderings by the lonely shore,
Our August mornings, our September moons,
     Our long, sweet, summer days that are no more.

We sat together by the sunset sea,
     Screened from its solemn splendors by a wall
Of beech and oak and many a tangled tree
     Of the witch-elms that over-roofed our hall.

It was your birth-night, and, close-clasped in mine,
     I held your hand and blessed the imperial hour
That sheathed your spirit in a mortal shrine,
     And gave to bloom on earth a thornless flower.