Below, the sea lies blue and cold as steel,
And smooth as satin stretched from shore to shore,
Save where a shimmering fish leaps;
or an oar
or an oar
Reeking with crimson rises; or the keel
Of some ship lets a rough path backward reel;
The sun―a flaming thing―sinks low and lower
And beats upon the West’s unclosing door;
The shadows downward creep and reach to feel,
With long black fingers, if the day be dead;
Above, the sky glows like a pearl alight
With a rose-diamond’s shifting gold and red;
And o’er the eastern mountains, soft and white,
The moon steps, trembling, from her silver bed―
A virgin bride―to meet the lips of night.
“February Night” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).