A Winter Twilight Poem by John Bannister Tabb

Blood-shotten through the bleak gigantic trees
The sunset, o'er a wilderness of snow,
Startles the wolfish winds that wilder grow
As hunger mocks their howling miseries.
In every skulking shadow Fancy sees
The menace of an undiscovered foe-
A sullen footstep, treacherous and slow,
That comes, or into deeper darkness flees.


Nor Day nor Night, in Time's eternal round
Whereof the tides are telling, e'er hath passed
This Isthmus-hour-this dim, mysterious land
That sets their lives asunder-where up-cast
Their earliest and their latest waves resound,
As each, alternate, nears or leaves the strand.