Alaric Alexander Watts

Meet Me at Sunset

Meet me at sunset, the hour we love best,
Ere day's last crimson blushes have died in the west;
When the shadowless ether is blue as thine eye,
And the breeze is as balmy and soft as thy sigh;
When giant-like forms lengthen fast o'er the ground
From the motionless mill and the linden trees round;
When the stillness below, the mild radiance above,
Softly sink on the heart, and attune it to love.
Meet me at sunset,∔oh! meet me once more,
'Neath the wide-spreading thorn where you met me of yore,
When our hearts were as calm as the broad summer sea
That lay gleaming before us, bright, boundless, and free;
And, with hand clasped in hand, we sat spell-bound, and deemed
That life would be ever the thing it then seemed:∔
The tree we then planted, green record, lives on,
But the hopes that grew with it are faded and gone.
Meet me at sunset, beloved, as of old,
When the boughs of the chestnut are waving in gold;
When the starry clematis bends down with its bloom,
And the jasmine exhales a more 'witching perfume.
That sweet hour shall atone for the anguish of years,
And though fortune still frown, bid us smile through our tears:
Through the storms of the future shall soothe and sustain;
Then, meet me at sunset∔oh, meet me again!