Fog.

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,     Dreamlike before me floating! what abides         Behind thy pearly veil's         Opaque, mysterious woof?     Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long     Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,         Nigh me I still can mark         Cool fields of beaded grass.     No more; for on the rim of the globed world     I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.         But songs of unseen birds         And tranquil roll of waves     Bring sweet assurance of continuous life     Beyond this silvery cloud.    Fantastic dreams,         Of tissue subtler still         Than the wreathed fog, arise,     And cheat my brain with airy vanishings     And mystic glories of the world beyond.         A whole enchanted town         Thy baffling folds conceal -     An Orient town, with slender-steepled mosques,     Turret from turret springing, dome from dome,         Fretted with burning stones,         And trellised with red gold.     Through spacious streets, where running waters flow,     Sun-screened by fruit-trees and the broad-leaved palm,         Past the gay-decked bazaars,         Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men.     Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues,     While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares.         The sultry air is spiced         With fragrance of rich gums,     And through the lattice high in yon dead wall,     See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face,         Flushed like a musky peach,         Peers down upon the mart!     From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head     She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil:         'Midst the blank blackness there         She blossoms like a rose.     Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes,     And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam?         Behold her smile on me         With honeyed, scarlet lips!     Divine Scheherazade! I am thine.     I come!    I come! - Hark! from some far-off mosque         The shrill muezzin calls         The hour of silent prayer,     And from the lattice he hath scared my love.     The lattice vanisheth itself - the street,         The mart, the Orient town;         Only through still, soft air     That cry is yet prolonged.    I wake to hear     The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes         Stands the white wall of mist,         Blending with vaporous skies.     Elusive gossamer, impervious     Even to the mighty sun-god's keen red shafts!         With what a jealous art         Thy secret thou dost guard!     Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds,     Within an opal hollow, there abides         The lady of the mist,         The Undine of the air -     A slender, winged, ethereal, lily form,     Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair,         In waving raiment swathed         Of changing, irised hues.     Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed     The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows:         Into each flower-cup         Her cool dews she distills.     She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks,     She knows the green soft hollows of their sides,         And unafraid she floats         O'er the vast-circled seas.     She loves to bask within the moon's wan beams,     Lying, night-long upon the moist, dark earth,         And leave her seeded pearls         With morning on the grass.     Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts     Of her fantastic palace I might pass,         And reach the inmost shrine         Of her chaste solitude,     And feel her cool and dewy fingers press     My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart         She poured with tender love         Her healing Lethe-balm!     See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves!     Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams         Upon a newborn world         And laughing summer seas.     Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance     Through crystal air.    On the horizon's marge,         Like a huge purple wraith,         The dusky fog retreats.