THE morning was chill and misty,
And a white and drifting veil
Hid all the mountain passes
And the elm-fringed intervale.
We gazed in a puzzled wonder,
And looked to the left and the right,
For it seemed that some spell had seized the world
And had changed it during the night.
Was there ever a mountain yonder,
We asked, or a pine-clad stream?
Or red-gold trees in the hollow?
Or were all these things a dream?
Then suddenly as we questioned
The mists turned thin and blue,
And up in the far, high heaven
A mountain outline grew.
Like a vision it gleamed and vanished,
But its beckon was seen and caught,
And one peak after another
Flashed out with the speed of thought;
And the mist wreaths floated higher,
And drifted off one by one,
And the wet, green autumn meadows
Shone out in the yellow sun;
And the scarlet and dun of the hillsides
Had borrowed a fresher hue,
And the purple gate of the notch swung wide,
And a pink cloud floated through.
And I thought of some heavy-hearted ones
Whose world had suddenly changed
To a whirl of mist and driving cloud
From all fair things estranged,
And who sat and wearily wondered
If ever the world seemed bright,
And half believed that joy was a dream
Which fled with the flying night;
And how, by little and little,
The clouds were tinged with sun,
And the former joys of living
Dawned out of them one by one,—
The hope and the work and the loving,
The zest of thought and plan,
The old-time strength of friendship,
The old-time need of man.
And the world which was changed for a morning
Was the same dear world again,
With only an added ripeness, caught
From its brief eclipse of pain.