Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
A Mirage of the West
By John James Piatt (1835–1917)Land in Cloud
A
With a dark splendor: the enchanted hour
Works momentary miracles in the sky;
Weird shadows take from fancy what they lack
For semblance, and I see a boundless plain,
A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air,
Gigantic shapes of reapers moving slow
In some new harvest: so I can but dream
Of my great Land, that takes its morning star
Out of the dusky evening of the east,
My Land, that lifted into vision gleams
Misty and vast, a boundless plain afar
(Like yonder fading fantasy of cloud),
With shadowy reapers moving, vague and slow,
In some wide harvest of the days to be,—
A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air!