Twilight Thoughts Poem by Maria Gowen Brooks

SWEET is the evening twilight; but, alas!
There's sadness in it: day's light tasks are done,
And leisure sighs to think how soon must pass
Those tints that melt o'er heaven, O setting sun,

And look like heaven dissolved. A tender flush
Of blended rose and purple light, o'er all
The luscious landscape spreads like pleasure's blush,
And glows o'er wave, sky, flower, cottage, and palm-tree tall.

'T is now that solitude has most of pain;
Vague apprehensions of approaching night
Whisper the soul, attuned to bliss, and fain
To find in love equivalent for light.

The bard has sung, God never form'd a soul
Without its own peculiar mate, to meet
Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole
Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete!

But thousand evil things there are that hate
To look on happiness; these hurt, impede;
And leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate,
Keep kindred heart from heart to pine, and pant, and bleed.

And, as the dove to far Palmyra flying
From where her native founts of Antioch beam,
Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,
Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream,—

So —many a soul o'er life's drear desert faring,
Love's pure congenial spring unfound, —unquaff'd —
Suffers —recoils —then, thirsty and despairing
Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught.