Dimension: 11"X14" on 140 Pound Strathmore watercolor paper Medium: Acrylics A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire User Rating: 8.0 /10 (7 votes) - vote - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Print friendly version E-mail this poem to e friend Send this poem as eCard Add this poem to MyPoemList THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obey'st I in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around, And, mingling with the still night and mute sky, Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night. Here could I hope, like some enquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. Percy Bysshe Shelley