Fires in Illinois

HOW bright this weird autumnal eve--

While the wild twilight clings around,

Clothing the grasses every-where,

With scarce a dream of sound!

The high horizon's northern line,

With many a silent-leaping spire,

Seems a dark shore--a sea of flame--

Quick, crawling waves of fire!

I stand in dusky solitude,

October breathing low and chill,

And watch the far-off blaze that leaps

At the wind's wayward will.

These boundless fields, behold, once more,

Sea-like in vanish'd summers stir;

From vanish'd autumns comes the Fire--

A lone, bright harvester!

I see wide terror lit before--

Wild steeds, fierce herds of bison here,

And, blown before the flying flame,

The flying-footed deer!

Long trains (with shaken bells, that moved

Along red twilights sinking slow)

Whose wheels grew weary on their way,

Far westward, long ago;

Lone wagons bivouack'd in the blaze,

That, long ago, stream'd wildly past;

Faces from that bright solitude

In the hot gleam aghast!

A glare of faces like a dream,

No history after or before,

Inside the horizon with the flames,

The flames--nobody more!

The vision vanishes in me,

Sudden and swift and fierce and bright;

Another gentler vision fills

The solitude, to-night:

The horizon lightens every-where,

The sunshine rocks on windy maize;

Hark, every-where are busy men,

And children at their plays!

Far church-spires twinkle at the sun,

From villages of quiet born,

And, far and near, and every-where,

Homes stand amid the corn.

No longer driven by wind, the Fire

Makes all the vast horizon glow,

But, numberless as the stars above,

The windows shine below!

John James Piatt

My Shadow's Stature

WHENE'RE, in morning airs, I walk abroad,

Breasting upon the hills the buoyant wind,

Up from the vale my shadow climbs behind,

An earth-born giant climbing toward his god;

Against the sun, on heights before untrod,

I stand: faint glorified, but undefined,

Far down the slope in misty meadows blind,

I see my ghostly follower slowly plod.

"O stature of my shade," I muse and sigh,

"How great art thou, how small am I the while!"

Then the vague giant blandly answers, "True,

But though thou art small thy head is in the sky,

Crown'd with the sun and all the Heaven's smile--

My head is in the shade and valley too."

John James Piatt

Taking the Night Train

A TREMULOUS word, a lingering hand, the burning

Of restless passion smoldering--so we part;

Ah, slowly from the dark the world is turning

When midnight stars shine in a heavy heart.

The streets are lighted, and the myriad faces

Move through the gaslight, and the homesick feet

Pass by me, homeless; sweet and close embraces

Charm many a threshold--laughs and kisses sweet.

From great hotels the stranger throng is streaming,

The hurrying wheels in many a street are loud;

Within the depot, in the gaslight gleaming,

A glare of faces, stands the waiting crowd.

The whistle screams; the wheels are fumbling slowly,

The path before us glides into the light:

Behind, the city sinks in silence wholly;

The panting engine leaps into the night.

I seem to see each street a mystery growing,

In mist of dreamland--vague, forgotten air:

Does no sweet soul, awakened, feel me going?

Loves no dear heart, in dreams, to keep me there?

John James Piatt