Later Poems / by Bliss Carman [electronic text]

In Gold Lacquer

GOLD are the great trees overhead, And gold the leaf-strewn grass, As though a cloth of gold were spread To let a seraph pass. And where the pageant should go by, Meadow and wood and stream, The world is all of lacquered gold, Expectant as a dream.

Against the sunset's burning gold, Etched in dark monotoneBehind its alley of grey treesAnd gateposts of grey stone, Stands the Old Manse, about whose eaves An air of mystery clings, Abandoned to the lonely peace Of bygone ghostly things.

In molten gold the river winds With languid sweep and turn, Beside the red-gold wooded hill Yellowed with ash and fern. The streets are tiled with gold-green shade And arched with fretted gold, Ecstatic aisles that richly thread This minster grim and old.

The air is flecked with filtered gold,—The shimmer of romance Whose ageless glamour still must hold The world as in a trance, Pouring o'er every time and place Light of an amber sea, The spell of all the gladsome things That have been or shall be.