HER Leghorn hat was of the bright gold tint <br />The setting sunbeams give to autumn clouds; <br />The ribband that encircled it as blue <br />As spots of sky upon a moonless night, <br />When stars are keeping revelry in heaven; <br />A single ringlet of her clustering hair <br />Fell gracefully beneath her hat, in curls <br />As dark as down upon the raven's wing; <br />The kerchief, partly o'er her shoulders flung, <br />And partly waving in the wind, was woven <br />Of every colour the first rainbow wore, <br />When it came smiling in its hues of beauty, <br />A promise from on high to a lost world. <br />Her robe seemed of the snow just fallen to earth, <br />Pure from its home in the far winter clouds, <br />As white, as stainless; and around her waist, <br />(You might have spanned it with your thumb and finger,) <br />A girdle of the hue of Indian pearls <br />Was twined, resembling the faint line of water <br />That follows the swift bark o'er quiet seas. <br />Her face I saw not—but her shape—her form, <br />Was one of those with which creating bards <br />People a world of their own fashioning, <br />Forms for the heart to love and cherish ever, <br />The visiting angels of our twilight dreams. <br />Her foot was loveliest of remembered things, <br />Small as a fairy's on a moonlit leaf <br />Listening the wind-harp's song, and watching by <br />The wild-thyme pillow of her sleeping queen, <br />When proud Titania shuns her Oberon. <br />But 'twas that foot which broke the spell alas! <br />Its stocking had a deep, deep tinge of blue,— <br />I turned away in sadness, and passed on.<br /><br />Fitz-Greene Halleck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-sketch-7/
