The fairest clouds that deck the sky
Above Potomac's tide are seen;—
The soft tints of the sea-shell's dye;
The hues that in Damascus vie
(Those bowers Barada wanders by)
With sunsets Hermon shines between;
When tranquil evening's latest ray
O'er Tyre and Sidon melts away
Through gold and rose and violet
Till Sharon's plain with dew is wet,
And the hills darken, one by one,
And night comes down on Lebanon.
Rare as the cloud by Volga's stream
When morning over Asia shone;
The cloud which caught its crimson beam
And sailed o'er earth and sky supreme,
Wrapped in that fiery-purple gleam—
An eagle from the Oural blown,
A messenger of bliss or ban
With wide wings drifting past Kazan!
And dome and cross and minaret
A moment in its bloom were set;
Then flame and purple paled to gray
And down the steppe dissolved in day.
And glows as warm as those that steep
In twilight splendor Egypt's river,
When cool the winds from Philæ creep
Past Karnak's immemorial sleep
And Memnon's watchers fain to keep
Their gaze adown the east forever!
While, north, the pyramids recline,
Wan peaks against the golden shine,
And through the orange dusk the plain
Dims to the desert and the main;—
Such morning gleams, such evening glows,
The blue above Potomac knows.