Dusk

0705 dusk, one tree 02
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

The sun left quietly this evening. In the east, there was a band of blue at the horizon, soft pink above that, and then more blue. It tweaked my mind to a Rupert Brooke poem. I can still recite The Soldier after choosing to learn it in my teenage years, but this was another, prompted by the fading light and gently layered sky. The hills to the west were dark blue against a warm yellow, slowly leaching of colour, but the east was the one my camera could catch, or try to. Something about half light, and then, colour dies...here it is... (read it aloud...)

Day That I Have Loved

by Rupert Brooke
(1887-1915)

Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making
Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.
There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;
And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,

Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,
Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming
And marble sand....
Beyond the shifting cold twilight,
Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,
There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear
Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.
Oh, the last fire -- - and you, unkissed, unfriended there!
Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!

(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,
Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us,
Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,
High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,

The grey sands curve before me....
From the inland meadows,
Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark, and fills
The hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows,
And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.

Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering...
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!

(There are some other photos in my Flickr photostream - click on this one to go there and see the others).